shorter days
a bright but distant fleeting sun
corpses
frostbitten
buried
under
heaps
loads
avalanches upon avalanches tons
upon
tons
of crunchy frost and snow
which
add
injury to injury
were
the first burns not
enough

green again
pushing up
fertilized
by their predecessors
unshaded
by the stripped bare spruces they drink
in deep
lingering sun
drink in melting
permafrost
unsuspecting unknowing
the process
will repeat
too soon far too soon

watch
miles and miles of spruce
iconic dark and scraggly
succeeding where others failed
in the swamp and the bog and the
ceilings of permafrost
inhospitable to its larger counterparts
teeming crowding reaching
upward and downward
but never achieving much of either
still there is so much life so much
fuel

an expanse of
charcoal and sienna 
and tempered yellow sun
tufts of brittle needles
remain atop petrified tombstones

that stand sentinel
over their fallen counterparts

ashy statues

silly the name black spruce
was never meant to be literal