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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