Red Beads Stitched on Black - Maroney

Dark is numbly silent
Outside our windows.
The dark crawls on all fours
Like a sooty hyena
Our light stabs him furiously
But this is his shire of dark
He hardly cares he prowls
Around our fence, sniffs the garbage
Paws our bruised Brussels sprouts
Split to the roots by frost
His hot breath mists up the glass
His eyes are red beads stitched on black
He scratches up a root down by the creek
And thinks its a dead tumor
But it only sleeps
He holds the dark incompletely
The vessel is nearly full
The light is a seed in the earth.
But the coma of winter is mine-shaft deep
Spring, the shudder of light
On our stiffened kale.