On Winter

The first poem in my Seasons quartet

We mourn the loss of afternoons to ever-sooner moons,

The darkness we had once forgot in old Julys and Junes,

It creeps on us to break our hearts, and tear apart the days,

So bitter in its jealousy of Summer-long malaise.

It takes the Autumn to defeat the shining light completely,

And lulls us into cold retreat so tightly and so neatly.

The berries gone, the shadows long, the bareness of the oaks,

The dryness of the rain compared to lavish Summer soaks.

We take to celebrate the dark in merry festive ways,

We wake and sigh and wait for Thy most holiest of days,

When we forget the blackened chill, and look to warmth inside,

But fickle is the thrill in which we drown; the Christmas tide.

For Winter has not yet begun, and crowning is the white,

That buries nature’s wary heart in January’s night.

The King of all the seasons, and lengthy be his reign,

A thing of earthly reason is the strength he doth maintain.

He breaks the spirits of the weak who look ahead to Spring,

And takes delight in plucking sight from those who strive to cling,

He’ll conjure storms and thickest fog to smother quickest hope,

And break the clouds to bring the cold, and laugh at how we cope,

Pathetic hectic humans down the jagged frosty slope.

This Emperor of seasons, who holds himself above,

Who’d freeze the beating of a heart, and suffocate our love.

We take the shakes and tumbles, the callousness and pain,

The isolated loneliness, the sharply ripping rain,

The dying breath of innocence, the bite of every shard

Of ice that forms in chests and trees so mercilessly hard,

And mourn the loss of afternoons in every Christmas card.