Revisionist Poetry – “Sepulchre of Winter Light” – Hints of Sunset, v.4

The sun dies beautifully.

It sinks behind the black-veined trees
like a lantern lowered into deep water,
casting bruised sepia upon the snowless earth—
a final sacrament before the long extinguishing.

Above us,
clouds mass like ruined kingdoms.

The cold arrives with intelligence.
It creeps beneath doors,
whispers along the eaves,
lays thin silver fingers upon the glass.

Soon the storm descends.

Not merely snow—
but a great white forgetting.

The sky folds inward.
Fields vanish.
Roads dissolve into spectral distances.
Even sound itself seems buried alive.

And we,
small keepers of borrowed warmth,
sit behind our glowing panes
watching winter unmake the world.

Yet terror has its strange seductions.

There is holiness in this obliteration,
in hearing the wind grieve through the wires,
in feeling the enormous dark press gently
against the fragile architecture of the heart.

Then comes the stillness.

A silence so complete
it feels ancient.

And somewhere beneath the storm’s vast shroud,
the hidden sun endures—
waiting,
like memory,
to return.