White crust on the lake

a wound with a paper-thin scab

its surface a broken reflection.

Wooden boats abandoned, an incomplete voyage disarray

of belly up hulls like grievous beached whales.

The hound of Mielikki fell

with stone fruit embedded in his heart,

three cloudless winter nights ago.

I , the deranged demiurge at the gate,

keeper of amalgam worlds, weeps silently.

My tongue lays in a ravine,

when raining it floats like a gondola

silently towards the ocean, an indigent deposit,

for punishment of the lily-livered is to

be trapped under the weight of water.

My body dovetails with darkness

as I descend deep into dictatorial woods

to daven within batten blackness,

and Wolf footprints, bemired deep into snow

like sealing wax on a love letter.

Swirling a sweven softly lands

like a Smew in my unsuspected lap

singing a sorrowful song of the Sami

of two-dog nights and squall

of vanishing food and species.