Winter's Coming

At about this time every year, I feel myself start to slip into depression. I know another winter is ahead of me -- cold, dark, bitter, suffocating -- and it's all I can do to drag myself out of bed every morning. The thought of having to struggle into six layers of claustrophobia-inducing clothing and slog down to the bus stop in the dark at 5:30 every morning, and then having to peel off five of those layers once I get into the overheated bus...and then having to put them on again before we reach the subway an hour later...and taking them off again once I get to my office...It all just makes me want to bawl -- not a gentle weep, mind you, but a raging howl of protest. I see the leaves falling, the frost forming on the crunchy grass, and I know what I am in for.

I try to combat it with positive thoughts and vigorous exercise and vitamins B and D and grow lights hanging over my dining table. And, occasionally, poetry.

CYCLES

Quiet
snow is falling,
mounding on bush, tree, fence.
My world becomes a padded cell
in white.

Crying
clouds drift lower
awakening the grass,
hidden flowers astonish, gentle
colour.

Burning
crimson and gold,
autumn's bright fierce glory
in one brief soundless explosion
like blood --

It dies,
turning to brown,
sodden, cheerless, whispering
of winter's soulless chill and white's
return.