Winter's Icy Blast

Now returns cruel Winter's icy blast

A memory no longer from our past

But instead an insistant knife

That peels away the layers of life

To reveal the tiny, shrunken core

Strained, shivering, painful, sore

That hides in cave and cowers

Frightened by snow, hail showers

And waits with bated breath

For that inevitable, insiduous death

To creep unbidden through boot and soul

And, like the ferryman, takes its toll

Before passing forward on its path

Accompanied by chilling laugh

To caress its next victim unknowing

That despair its seeds are sowing

While futility seductively purrs

Its poison into freezing ears

Dripping honey-like cloyed

As though with mind it toyed

Before thrusting ice shard broken

As if giving bounty, a gift, a token

That stops heart with ungentle hand

Which once over many years spanned

Loved and cried and laughed

As Summer breeze did waft

Over green and gentle meadow

Unsullied by inpending shadow

That now falls and covers in gloom

This once laughter filled room

And hides from prying light

Eyes that no longer receive sight

But instead glazedly stare

Lifelessly from face without care

At window through which carollers call

As snow, bright, unheeded, begins to fall