Wearying, wild, woeful winter
How I hate you!
How bitter the cold that settles in my bones
And grays the inner landscape of my soul.

I am stripped as bare inside as out;
The trees alone are not sere and brown
Nor are the snowy sidewalks the only impediment
To my advancement from here to there

You toy with me, your warnings
Bathed in red and black
Your expectation that I will heed
Them snarled on the knife edge
Of your evil japes.

You know I will defy you, or try.

You will put ice and rain in my way;
You will send the tempest-tossed
To me only so they can unburden
Their desiccated hearts with the
Expectation I alone will bring
The sunshine that I’ve hidden
In some satchel of pent-up joy

You know it is not so;
You know my blackened soul
Does not permit the intrusion
Of too much light
And only the fire from
A ream of logs brings respite
To my icy hands.

I hate you.
You denounce my hatred,
And cry: misunderstanding!
You point to crystal icicles
And angels in the snow;
To happy children; to skis and sleds
And puppies with diamond-sparkled fur

I point to the battered shovel behind
My door as counter to your facetiousness;
The gray-white mound which used to be my car;
The faces of passer-by who wonder
If a hurricane in Florida is preferable to
A nor’easter in any January.

But what I hate the most is you
Pointing out the obvious:
That my despising you
Is an evolving malady
More pronounced as the calendar drives me
Steady to the close.

For that verity you dismiss me,
Snorting laughter.
Cabin fever gripes, you say,
And you’ve heard them all before.

01/30/2015

Posted on 01/30/2015
Copyright © 2024 Ken Harnisch