Mirkwood & The Necromancer are copyright J. R. R. Tolkien & The Tolkien Estate

Mirkwood in Winter

With crunching tred that pock-marks virgin snow,
Beneath green bows, sagged heavy from the fall.
As twilight smothers waning day's last glow,
We walk the collonnade of Winter's Hall.

In silent forest, blanketed in blue,
'Ware the Necromancer, shade-like and sly,
Wrapped in faded tatters, black in hue,
Each call that breaks the stillness is his cry.

He is the stark tree on the shattered crag,
His body twists with every withered limb.
Gnarled fingers wrought in hoar-frost snarl and snag,
His breath the freezing mist that rimes our skin.

He casts a shuddering flurry from a branch,
He sways with every nodding laden spire,
The wind-whipped snow-swirl is his spiral dance,
Each biting flake the kiss of his desire.

No tender lover he, beneath pale moons,
His longing, crypt-born, guides the conqueror worm,
No soft caresser; caster of the runes,
His frozen lich-touch scorches flesh from bone.

Swathed in shining light-shards; scales of steel,
The Pallid Lord is crystaline and cold,
Wrapped all about with Winter's bitterest gale,
Cloaked in the howling tumult of lost souls.

Thought, it thickens with white tendrils creeping,
And if from frigid night a dawn should rise,
And slanted sunlight 'neath the trees goes seeking,
It finds us rigid revenants, cased in ice.