MINERALARTS:

WINTER SOLSTICE SUNRISE (Lorena B. Moore, 1990)

In some hollow hall behind the dawn

Silent copper horns are blackening

In the tarnished penumbra of the year.

In that last hour before the old brittle sun

Freezes to shards in a dark burst of metal,

A deep, molten hum breaks out of the ground.

The winds take it up, ringing a frost-blown swell

Of overtones, sending it spiralling

Into the black throats of the long horns

That shudder and drone to life.

A chorus as unerring and multiple

As tree sap streaming through its vessel pipes

Shatters wall after wall of blue ice like glass,

Each layer brighter than the one before,

From indigo to palest cerulean,

A cascade of sky fragments.

The horns gleam brown, then glow red,

Until the last colorless pane falls, and

The white gold horns melt into a spinning globe

And rise.