I don't like the feeling of treading on sugar -
The snow forms a powder layer under me that makes
Me lose my foothold amidst the tussocks of frozen grass.
There are bird tracks like skewer-holes in a cake,
Pockets of air under the earth's new epidermis
Where the worms breathe chokingly.
There is nothing regal about this world of silence and death;
There are no flowers, only deer skulls,
Rotting skeleton faces missing a jaw that your dog drags up
And brings into this world of white, a blot against the papery
Snow. It would chatter at me if it had its jaw. It is putrid
But at the same time, grinningly-clean from the snow.
Its teeth look like old hollow treasure chests, sickly yellow
And strangely brittle. There is a brown leaf in one of the eye
Sockets. As I walk it bumps against my thigh, dislodging
The leaf so the skull is gazing at me dully.
Its horns appear to have lost a layer: parts of them have
A reptilian covering, scaly and wet. I let my dog take the
Skull carefully from me – it was his prize, after all – and
Carry it sedulously in his mouth until it is dropped in his fervour
For something else, and it sticks up awkwardly out of the ground,
Grinning satanically after me, its horns probing the silent air.