It’s getting harder to be Winter.

I keep trying, but I know I’m losing my grip.

I grunted out a little dusting of snow yesterday;

it didn’t even hide the grass, merely lightened it,

and only on top.

I pushed things down to thirty degrees last night,

but for the life of me could not hold it long enough

to make the ponds freeze. They ripple disrespectfully,

laughing at me, I fear, uncaring of my distress

over absurdly warm breezes.

I saw a cricket this very morning, alive – moving –

instead of deferentially dead, as it knows it should be.

My customary high thin cirrus give way to bizarre black cumulus.

I haven’t managed a hard freeze yet, and February looms.

It’s not right.

Every year grows hotter, on average, than the last,

the dismal measure of my declining status around the whole world.

I, Winter, who famously covered half the earth with mile-high glaciers.

And still it grows harder every year. My mightiest ice monuments melt,

wasting into the oceans’ rise.

Those humans have caused it, them and their hateful carbon.

But we’ll have the last word, my sisters and me.

Spring and Autumn will be as Summer used to be,

And Summer, oh hot Summer, she’ll exact our sweet revenge.

Just you wait and see.

©William D. Coffey

January 2017