Winter Sun

Sometimes it’s the other way around,
though most times the winter sun does x off x

by which I mean, you glimpse it baring the soul
of a whisper of empty branches or scrolling a message

across exhausted snow crusting a street corner
and you see reality, suddenly, not in a new way but an old

way in the way the winter sun is old, it’s been burning
so long after all maybe you think not with the heat

it had as a younger sun when everything grew green
beneath its gaze till a hemisphere turned its shoulder one

season and that was it, but sometimes it’s the other way
around, things can be cold and burning at once,

sometimes reality sees you, and it’s blinding.