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.

 


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