A Winter Solstice

Inspired by Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snow Evening"

I. Falls Interment

Driving south on Highway 41
somewhere north of Rockville, near Turkey Run,
I watch the Winter watching from the woods
as Fall's funeral procession comes to close.

Fall, whose colorful pyres of gaudy leaves
two weeks departed from the boughs
now lie scattered in the mass graves
of the potter's fields,
the last of their hues hemorrhaged
onto the gray-washed canvas of the evening sky
for this, the last autumnal sunset of a dying year.

The forests, having momentarily sloughed
their predecessor's yoke of tyranny
bend low once more, offering up their backs
to bear the somewhat lighter burden
of Winter's blacks and whites
as He takes the throne.
A murder of crows takes flight,
exploding from the naked crowns,
sooty wings daubing up the last colors
of the deceased's dynasty.

II. Winter on the Throne

The sun departs disgraced,
banished beneath the blanket of the horizon
to hibernate.
He'll not be seen again
before Winter's kingdom ends.

The sky puts on her deepest ebony shawl,
not in deference to this new despot
but in mourning her exiled lover.
No sparkling jewelry adorns her visage
this Solstice Eve.
Winter bends her tears to his frigid will,
the first snows of His monarchy
begin to bury the land.

Beneath the cover of dark
the woods, Winter's marshaled armies
press in upon the empty mirror miles
where I reflect,
a fleeting subject passing through
a suddenly foreign territory.
I find myself thinking of Robert Frost,
of how many miles there might be before I sleep.
I wonder if Winter's woods are truly lovely
but know that they are surely dark and deep.

Author's Note

I've been playing with this for awhile...expanding, contracting, removing, replacing and overall revising. This poem and I have come to an impasse so any advice is welcome.