Falling Snow

Drifting through the silver moonbeams, the snow falls among the black-trunked trees. Not a sound in this dead place, only the cold, the cold and my labored breaths and the stomping of my feet. The graveyard, forgotten, is just up the ridge, and the cross of some tombstone has cast a shadow at my feet. Holy ground, frozen ground, and silent, so silent in this winter’s night.

Long ago, this hill was barren, but besides the bodies planted, a wood now has overrun everything, and under the shadows of its branches, the dead have been neglected, their markers worn and fallen, their memory lost.

A new sound, a gate, a rusted hinge. For a moment, stopping to open the gate, the weight of my hopeless endeavor consumed me, but the worn iron fell before me, inviting me to my search.

Under the moon, under the snow,
where wait the souls of the unknown,
a phantom flower’s said to bloom
above the yearning of a tomb.