The Coming Chill

Although the temperature is quite balmy for mid-winter, those few December weeks of intense cold gave a taste of things to come. Hopefully, we will not experience a resurgence of the powerful winds and icy snows of yesteryear that crippled the city for a week or more. Still, I look forward to at least some substantial snow before Winter comes to a close. On a separate, technical note, I maintained the same pattern of sounds in the three primary verses of this poem - 'th' in the 1st and 3rd lines, and 'm' in the 2nd and 4th. I really don't know if it adds anything, but it was a fun experiment.


The Coming Chill

A polar raw lays mantled on the earth,
a heavy fetter fallen on the bloom,
and I am found confounded in my mirth
and firmly muzzled. What a bitter tomb

of hard and heavy dusk, foreboding death,
as if a resurrection cannot come,
and rearing, mouth agape with withered breath,
in wait of mortal marrow taken from

the fallow bed of fading undergrowth,
where little flecks of life are stricken lame
at last, for now the winter keeps its oath
to fell each leaping stem, as if a flame

that casts a feeble glow of candlelight
were then extinguished, ere the day be night.