A.J. Dehan
Prayer for winter
Give us cold so cold it stops time.
Give us snow so deep we sink up to our thighs.
Bless us with a sighing wind that cracks the long creaking eaves
of the world and empties the sky of its 1000 drifting satellites.
Give us that one clear night where the wolf moon eclipses Mars
—god of war and agriculture (war of the flesh, war of the land).
May the wolf sink its cold yellow teeth into that dead god’s neck.
Bless us with the glinting snow in the light of the stars,
like 1,000,000 other stars blanketing the ground,
refracting back the light of all the ones we’ve lost—for what reason?
Give us Orion rising in the east, waving his club at Jupiter,
{god of gods, king of kings, surviving son of Saturn
[god of time, money, and devouring one’s sons]}.
Give us cold so cold it stops money.
Give us Judith—seducer and beheader of kings.
Give us 1,000 Judiths.
Bless us with icicles in the shape of knives on the doorsteps of the gods
(may it be their blood spread on our thresholds).
Bless Orion’s hunt, may he give us their pelts, may we huddle for warmth.
May Judith dance with Saturn.
May our spirits dance, too,
like so many seeds forgotten for the season
until Spring comes.
A.J. Dehan is a writer and poet living in metro Detroit. His work has previously been published by The Tampa Review and Fogged Clarity under the name Andrew De Haan. He chose a dead-ended path and has now returned to a regular poetry practice after 15 years of neglecting this journey. When not writing, he's with his family, obsessing about plants and/or riding a bicycle.You can read his writing about bicycles and adventure on his Substack: