January Whispers

Knee-deep
Admiring winter’s ballet
Icy pirouettes
Twirl to an herbal symphony
A spirited blizzard
Frolics in the morning sky
The world is veiled
In fragrant sheets of delicate neutral
Transcending ambiguity
Glistening icicles play on the eaves
Stalactites of radiant topaz
Shimmering like stained glass
Alight with inner grace

I renounce the bitter cliché
Portrayed erroneously
By the literary ghosts of yore
Their words are a fallacy
This is not the season of everlasting death
There is no malice relayed
In the whisper of the January wind
No clandestine demons lurk
Beneath the frost
I refuse to see depression
In unparalleled majesty
Perfection

Rosy-cheeked
I shovel out the narrow portal
That leads from my chicken-noodle haven
Back to the pungency of civilization
Secretly longing
To leave the white dunes
Where nature intended them
A barrier against society
Proffering mountaintop freedom
To hibernate in fleecy pajamas
Until the onslaught of spring
Dispatches its colorful harbingers
Dragging me from my lair
With the hook of a vengeful thaw
But this is a 4WD nation
Besot with shoreline myopia
Irked by the fallen snow
So I dig to join them
Begrudgingly

Hot-cocoa Sunday
I peel away my stiff garb
As the storm follows me indoors
Arctic souvenirs
From the tread of steel-tipped boots
Embellish the foyer
Snow clouds have beatified the boulevard
With their benevolent caress
A glacier-blue glaze
Postponing the commute
For another day

I am beguiled once again
To think only of love and home
A day enveloped in patchwork vignettes
With its myriad refugee snowflakes

Amassed on my front porch
Awaiting the riposte of my shovel
A crescent smile surmounts my face
Perhaps I alone appreciate this season
And its frosty sojourns
I become entranced by the scenery
Beyond the stenciled window
As the numbness cedes
And my toes begin to tingle