
Frozen H20 floats immiscible on ponds As blades score surface with festive bonds. Snowflake fractals float upon a breeze Defying gravity, concealing lost leaves. Ilex aquafolium bleeds a hoary frost, waxy cuticle, cloaks shivers - no water is lost. Satsuma segments of time zones split and the world's turn slows on the axis as tinselly-string theory explains Santa's sleigh reveals just how Yule became Christmas Day. Mercurial thermometers to now cook our feasts, iced with frosted carbohydrates , not least those pudding-pie vapours with their angels share evaporates into crystalline, midwinter air. A Fibonacci of branches claws upon high Woodcuts onto a flambéed sky, While below, a wood-wide- web of fungi peacefully shares the wealth of the Magi. Saturnalian starscapes acting as prisms, to mighty Polaris - who anchors asterisms in a winter triangle, where scorching Sirius bathes evening dog walkers in their Bedouin swathes. Burnt-out Betelgeuse -the pom-pom of three, diamond dusted with Geminids strikes the black canopy. Electrons bounce out, releasing wild Northern lights, as the auspicious comet did on that holy night - reminding us we are but stardust on granite, Carolling about on our Goldilocks planet. Monoxide manifestations in gaslight conjure ghosts of Christmas futures foretell a blur when snow and ice melt, winter spells broken, and Dickensian ice-ages are forever forsaken. Skeins in the sky, now gaggling on land, mock mankind's bottom-heavy sands. But until Twelfth Night flames will rise - of chemical salts, halide metals oxidised - jewelled in blue, green and pink burning hypnotic embers of our willing hibernation. For when we emerge from our iron-earth sleep, dreams of 2020 visions - snow-blank promises to keep. Winter wonders of science will become evergreen spreading tidings of joy, and a miraculous vaccine Suzanne Fairless-Aitken

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