Ice Queen

The moon was an ice queen tonight;
sledging frost-white across the Milky Way.

I stood alone on a ghost-glowing heathland,
tiny against the acres of space and eternities of sky.

A scattering of small pines
punctuated the moonwashed moor;
levitating above the luminescent land on a
slender thread of trunk.

But the moon was centre stage.
By the edge of a black pond I
saw her small reflection shimmer
as she worked her winter magic
casting spells upon the water,
turning liquid into stone.

But oh, what elegance she brings..
sketching out her ancient memories of sister earth
she sculpts frost feathers from the fossil birds,
and giant crystals from the continents of old.

Needles of ice knit her bidding
in the black and frigid water.

I stood, still as stone and equally transformed.

Ice stitches grew beneath the moon's pale fingering.
Between them, little veins of water shrank away.
The grass around me creaked as its hoar-frost hair stood on end,
saluting the moon.

In the vast spellbound silence
only the mechanical rip and chew
of a horse grazing in the distant darkness
gave me hope that I might
tear myself from iron chains of wonder.

When at last I turned,
shook the magic from my eyes and walked away;
she sent my shadow on ahead
persuading me to stay.

(c) A McN