Now are we in the bleak end of the year.
The Yule wheel grinds its revolution slow,
a twelve-month for each turn. Like a machine
of iron, creaking, groaning with the weight
of effort, inexorably it bears
our loved ones ever farther from our arms
into the empty nothingness of death.
Its engine black as coal, metallic, harsh,
a railroad train that fades and disappears
into the distance, hidden from our sight.
The Yule wheel grinds its revolution slow
and drags us through the coldest, darkest nights
of frozen limbs and stillness without breath,
returning every year to this same state
inanimate, like to the graves we all
will find and will inhabit at the end.