Moon surgery

The light is clean,
surgically clean.
The moon wears the whitest of masks and the stars are
scalpel points of polished steel.

The land is anaesthetised with cold,
And even the pulse of time
Is barely discerned in the slow
Tick of constellations round the pole.

Needles of ice implant
with crystalline precision.
Frost acupuncture
Pierces leaf and levers stone
From soil.

This is war against disorder,
Crystals in advance,
Fixing the world in chains
of ordered, geometric
beauty.

Tonight, such order wins.
The water will no longer dance.
There will be living things that die
And cells that freeze in geometries of ice.

But there is also tomorrow.
Always, there is tomorrow
And always another alchemy...

Of sun, and light; of life
and warmth.

(c) A McN