Upon a bough of rime-crust white,
Where winter weeps in velvet night,
There perched a phantom, stark and bleak,
With obsidian eye and ivory beak.
A sentinel of shadow-cast,
Whose lineage was a frozen past,
He watched the window’s golden glare…
A cruel, incandescent snare.
Below, within the timbered hall,
Where amber shadows dance and fall,
A cauldron breathed a savory steam,
Like some fevered, gluttonous dream.
The Gruyère boiled in molten gold,
A richness that the senses hold,
While silver tines, in rhythmic beat,
Sought the heavy, bubbling heat.
Oh, the scent! A pungent, sharp desire,
Kindled like a funeral pyre,
It drifted through the frosted pane,
To stir the hunger, to incite the pain.
The crow, a ghost of midnight hue,
Felt the ache of the void accrue;
He tapped a rhythm, grim and slow,
Against the glass, above the snow.
He was the outcast, the shunned, the grim,
Whose world was a gray and ghostly rim,
Looking in upon the feast’s delight…
The warmth of man, the velvet light.
He craved not the glory, nor the gold,
But a morsel to keep the winter’s cold,
A singular scrap of earthly grace,
To brighten his desolate hiding place.
Then came a laugh…a sudden, jarring sound…
Where carelessness and mirth abound;
A hand trembled, a gesture strayed,
And a toasted crust, in a reckless cascade,
Tumbled forth from the gilded rim,
To the waiting gaze, precise and trim.
It landed soft on the marble sill,
Where the breath of the North lay frozen and still.
With a downward sweep, a sudden gust,
The shadow claimed the golden crust…
A solitary, salted prize,
Snatched from the world of the waking eyes.
He flew back to his frozen height,
A silhouette against the night,
Eating the crust of a human feast,
A lonely, hungry, midnight beast,
While the warmth of the room, and the golden glow,
Sank slowly into the freezing snow.
