before the winter solstice

if every story featured construction
erected in all sorts of directions
with delicate gestures, pursed lips
and wisps of perfume towering the planes
with withering dithers of pierced eyes

followed with amazing fortifications
crumbling with microscopic matrices
along faultlines of indescriminate
motions twisting into airless canopies
settling to a brackish tundra metropolis

you could smell your way through
to the nearest stream and traverse
through mountain passes in endess
shadows cast under the crag always
protuding into the sun's hazy eye

and when collapsing at the mouth
of the stream you found yourself
reborn in a sticky mess of new and old
memories and scrapnel lodged in ancient
trees along the unsettled ground

you could always look up and find
a few things to anchor you into
this reconstituted life (formerly
yours) again still like this
taste of perfume or smelly lotion

lodged in the back of your throat

you see
if every story
built and destroyed
ended at its beginning
then we would know

and somehow
in spite of everything
it would be alright

but those familiar smells
can taste so
strong in strange ways
when you can't
place which direction the wind
blew toward you in
these last glimmering days

before the sun
starts coming back to
lengthen days
and build new seasons