Only snow that falls can melt.....

Only snow that falls can melt

and rust by silence and alarm

to conceal the snow churns that

burial gauge of fallen petals and slice

the flake that scars upright amongst

the fleeting ice

that scraped ridge

that scalpel that punctures deep

into the wheeled wing

that salts the spears

ancient predator wise

to vigour and affliction

the confident temptation to stall the razor climb

by steep bravadoed boast

a precarious crevice

that fluorescent shelf landed

on a half-paved whisper

that shelf made brittle

to the taunt of collapse

to cast the last and the first glimmer

of the birth of that range

that sails limply towards the ferocity

when preyed flaunts

flood the trapped ageless lair

that stings the crystal ladder

and rages in gasps

blown-off the cornered

that preyed feeding

amongst the webbed snow

that falls listing and drowns the

unguarded glacier

that plunge of time

that is felled and a slanted

broken and cut by our scheduled age

that sowed the mind

of delicious remnants of decline

remains gutted with the mask of melt that snow falls

that unsheltered grave

that has a coloured crown

embraced the blurred skies wrapped

with hope and light began that all could be

that all would be begun when it

begins all that the summer will bring.

How to settle the clumps and drifted slumps

when only the snow that falls

can invent or redact

the once melt upon that glacier?

When do those skies fail that ice pail ?

Why does the clenched teeth readying

the lance without its edged thrust

are chipped frozen breath

drowning in snow that

blizzards slushed and bleaches

the ice corals ?

How do we prize the blue band

and gentle the late slumber

from that empty plate

filled with fruit and herb

of the enlightened flask ?

Will we smother the beat of parching heat

or still the answer until

frost attacks the fingernails of winter?

Is time a glacial clock

that has been struck

by that slush-cup that

we trawl to harbour

to bring all up ?