Frost's First Trick

The crisp crunch of a different kind.

Everything brown and dead has left.

Ethereal and surreal, for sure—

but the warning call,

the harbinger of winter's return,

is more grounded, less pristine.

<>

The first groan after the first touch

on a frosted car door and roof—

it burns and singes unleathered flesh.

Serene and brittle, the world aches;

the sun has forsaken us again.

<>

Scientifically, we know

the Earth has tilted on its axis,

though we didn't feel the 23.5-degree shift.

We felt its absence—

the sunlight's intensity,

lost to the harsh reality

that weather, like the accident of birth

to give forth nationality,

is but an accident of nature.

<>

It is neither warm nor cold,

it is positional—experiential.

The sanitised scents of spring's prelude

are a mind game, as are the colours

we see throughout the year—

those reds, greens, and yellows replaced

by blues, silvers, browns—

all cerebral illusions: optic, olfactory,

vestibulocochlear, facial, glossopharyngeal.

<>

Please echo the accent and cadence

of your own or Cutter's London drawl.

Where The Pledge becomes The Turn—

and all ends with The Prestige.

<>

The crisp crunch of a different kind—

everything brown and dead has left.

Ethereal, surreal—for sure—

but the warning call,

the harbinger of winter’s return,

is more grounded, less pristine.

<>

The white that cleans,

the white that dresses the world virginal,

in wait for spring's rebirth.

*

Thanks for reading!

Author's Notes: For those who don't get the references, this poem is inspired in part by my annoyance at poetic odes to the frost's appearance and the Christopher Nolan masterpiece The Prestige.