Winter Snakes

arrive 

tight-coiling the night

like sky sinews

grounded, dark-wrapping the trees

with glass-shard scales

and the mountains, brilliant 

in skin-shed waves 

of translucent drape

send slides wind-lit, ashen and

thunderous, curling sea-soft

to mirror pale-stars in

spell-blanket light, cast over-all

strange

as familiars

among evergreen and dropped cone

lifting smooth-needled heads 

to the ridge-returned sun

and uncoil