There is the most lovely, forlorn cloudsong
Of orange-gold purple-pink
In the skies still haunted
By the footprints snow left
In dizzying swirls
Like the ballet of butterflies
Through air diaphanous as soap bubbles,
Plièing through filaments of frost
In the humble, faint needlepoint stitchings of trees
With prematurely sugared leaves.
Tracks have been so deeply pressed
In the snow-dusted dirt
Where we walked, in our same circles
Every night,
When the cold is too much
For even the pantheon of stars to bear,
Those friends and relatives gathered
Around the dinner table, talking
About what’s on the stage below,
Before the curtain of morning is drawn
And they exit the theater,
Murmuring about the show they saw.
*
The sun, a bored duchess,
Somnolent, indolent,
Sprawls on a dais
That lowers to the ground as she readies
For bed, taking one final glance
In her looking glass, the lake
That feeds her vanity.
With a final gaping yawn and stretch,
She tucks herself in under the coverlets
Of stars, the moon
A valance above her four-poster bed,
And, sometimes, a pillow
On which to rest her head, a translucent cheek
Turned as she sinks into the eiderdown duvet
Of grass ebonied by nightfall,
The moon a nightlight churning
Kaleidoscope colors
Until all is opal.
Kathryn Sadakierski is a 22-year-old writer whose work has been published in anthologies, magazines, and literary journals around the world, including Blue Marble Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, October Hill Magazine, Northern New England Review, seashores: an international journal to share the spirit of haiku, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing, The Scriblerus, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Toyon Literary Magazine, Yellow Arrow Journal, and elsewhere. She graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. and M.S. from Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts.