Hegel's Storm
The trees froth with snowflakes the Schuylkill leadens
like the back of a mirror. The river clots with frozen ghosts. Trees branch like
lightning: white claws struggle up and away, though still earthbound. Flakes fall into the
windshield and dissolve: exploded cells, the remains of ebola or some other tropical
disease, wiped away with each stroke of the blade.
Evergreens sag under the weight of white. Snow covers
the road, and angles evoke unbidden runes from rock faces cut through the hills. I see a
world of water frozen in Fimbul Winter, and apocalypse.
Trees loom in the shapes of giants: mythic shadows that
stalk the forests, haunting, clinging. Snow shapes and engenders, then buries them
in the whiteout.
The tree giants tower over the scrub, sentinels for the
army that shambles behind. The vibration of their tread rumbles through the hills, an
imminence. The clash of spears on shields fans out like thunder, and their low voices sing
of war and death in the language of stones. Row upon row, the giants trample footprints
through the crusted snow and cross the horizon, leaving behind the vibration of their
wake.
Their dirge echoes among the hollows of the wood. The
forest sings their song in the whispers of leaves, and remembers it in tree rings.