Where branches end, the open starts
Night lays its ear against the dark
I move like smoke through frozen grass
A heartbeat hidden under ash

Need is the clearest kind of voice
It doesn’t argue, doesn’t pause
It points ahead with patient hands
And pulls my shadow through the pines
I read the wind like broken script
A thread of musk, a torn-off myth
Tracks stitched tight along the creek
A story written by the weak
My ribs remember empty days
My mouth remembers older ways
No villainy, no holy sign
Just body law and brittle time

Still, above the iron cold
A white disk hangs, unread, untold
Not warmth, not fire, just distant glass
And I keep asking as I pass

What is that lantern in the sky
If not a token drifting by
What does it buy, what does it spend
For beasts like me who never mend
I take what’s near, I leave no prayer
I learn the truth in frozen air
That mercy isn’t written here
Only the turning of the year

The herd moves like a single thought
Across the ridge the night forgot
I follow hunger’s straightened line
Through thorns that bite, through sap and brine
A slip, a start, a sudden run
A pulse that races from the sun
The world narrows to breath and snow
To muscle, teeth, to yes and no
And when it’s done, the silence comes
Like snowfall thick on speaking tongues
The ground erases every mark
A clean white page inside the dark

Winter keeps a simple book
No ink, no names, just what it took
The sum is paid in steam and heat
Then buried where the foxes sleep

What is that lantern in the sky
If not a token drifting by
What does it buy, what does it spend
For beasts like me who never mend
I take what’s near, I leave no prayer
I learn the truth in frozen air
That mercy isn’t written here
Only the turning of the year

Call it chance, call it design
Call it a road without a sign
I’ve heard men curse the tooth and claw
As if the woods should love their laws
But I have watched the cedars sway
Through storms that came and walked away
The trees don’t judge, the river sings
And everything keeps needing things
Somewhere a fawn becomes a spring
Somewhere a crow becomes a wing
Somewhere the moon keeps counting time
On faces it will never find

So I stand at the edge of light
Half in the trees, half out of sight
My belly full, my mind still thin
A question scratching at my skin

What is that lantern in the sky
If not a token drifting by
What does it buy, what does it spend
For beasts like me who never mend
I take what’s near, I leave no prayer
I learn the truth in frozen air
That mercy isn’t written here
Only the turning of the year

And under snow, the tally fades
No witness left, no blame, no praise
Yet deeper down, beneath the frost
The living forest counts the cost

Dawn loosens knots of brittle gray
My prints are gone, the world still stays
Inhale, exhale, the branches move
And I move with them, tooth and mood