Chrysalis

Rippling gusts crash,
Shrouded in inky twilight,
A golden trickle bleeds through the east. 

She trembles,
Her body rattles in an icy squall,
Her rime-crusted hair,
Snarled in her patchy furs,
Quivers in terror.

And she wonders, not for the first time,
Why she is here. 
Why, at the end of the world,
In the thralls of endless winter, 
Has this become her home?

And she remembers it, 
Petulantly rejecting them,
Telling them that she'd never come back, 
And not a soul begged her to stay.
So she marched off into the night,
The new days brought her vigor, 
And she plowed on,
Towards a destination she could not describe. 

The world made itself large before her,
And she made herself small,
Smaller than the majestic spires of granite, 
Smaller than the cascades crowned in icicles,
Smaller than the oaks that droop under thick snow,
Smaller than the tiniest acorn stashed in a    squirrel's den.

Smaller, even, than all she left. 

And now, before the ethereal pallor above,
Before clamoring blue jays,
Before crackling stellations of ice,
Before the aching warmth 
of a distant realm,
A diaphanous shimmer of brilliantine
drapes over the biting January air.

And she becomes even smaller,
Small enough to disappear
Into the morning mist.