Spirit

My camera captures the season’s first snow
as a moment shuttered in gray and white
chiaroscuro, its flakes suspended
across the photo.

Out back a wagon wheel lies
propped against a tree, just visible
in the yellow spotlight that sensors
itself on and off, disturbed
by the motion of my passage.

Tonight, the wind is a banshee
who screams high in the atmosphere,
whose frozen tears needle my face
who reaches down and wraps
a blanket of shivers around my bones.

Its only after I go inside and peer
into the playback viewer that I see
the strange face above the wheel
and its vaporish composition.

Two eyes, nose, long hair;
it looks at me and I
am oddly unsettled,
not knowing
if it’s demon or angel,
or if it follows me still.

copyright 2004 by Cookala