Winter Of Discontent

Now/This/Mine is a melancholy time. Days repeat themselves. Up, then out we go. Back in, then down we go. One bland day blending into the next, each like a precious stone dropped forever into the well of time.

I do not miss the barren trees, the frozen toes, the steady stoking for warmth, the slush and the mush, the deep cold shadows as old Sol skates across the western sky. But the breath visible, the scarlet cardinal caught in a sea of white, wood smoke still clinging in the frigid air, fields of untrodden snow, hot chocolate and cold noses, children and mittens, these I miss.

Eventually winter wanes into Earth’s verdant eruption. But here winter is only a name , a pretense, a mockery with palm trees draped in twinkling light coats, St. Nicholas on water skis, mowing in January and February. More like a brown lull between the flaming days of autumn and the voracious green of spring.

Never feeling winter’s bitter bite leaves me longing. The rhythm is broken, the cycle of the seasons comes unchained. Memories of cold days so long ago, butchering hogs after the first hard frost, outdoor plumbing, frozen creeks, pneumonia, even death.

Time rubs smooth the jagged edges of memory.