This pale sky will snow before sunset. Heavy-laden and soon enough the bottom will fall out of the wet white layers of cloud and fat ivory flakes will drift down, alighting on my eyes, my skin, my clothes, until all becomes white and all becomes black.

Clouds will break, burdens released, the sky falls silently and the night is black and piercing cold. The moon slips past Jupiter and his quartet of concubines. The stars slip by and a frozen sun crosses over this cocoon.

The wood will erupt, sharp cracks of breaking ice and limb as the black trees thaw. A small black bird hops from limb to naked limb and the water washes my corruption away. A brown fox hops over holes in the melting snow, comes and takes my unfeeling fingers from me where I cannot see.

The narrow space over me will erupt with color as the trees wrap themselves in verdurous raiment, an unchanging scene transforms. Birds return from the south and squirrels flow like mercury from branch to branch.

I will not be home again.