Wet Winter

Winter in the Midwest is a quakingly cold, arctic affair. The snow piles up in huge, tar-black mounds in the streets and parking lots, and the daily low temperature readings are rendered entirely void by harsh and constant windchill. For all its severity, however, those winters are easy to bear. Firstly, there are no fluctuations. When winter comes, it is to stay, and for six months, the land is locked in comfortable hibernation. When things finally do begin to warm towards that fabled 0° C mark, it is not uncommon to see the braver residents wandering around in shorts and tee-shirts. Secondly, and more importantly, it is not, in the end, utter cold that makes winter uncomfortable, but, rather, the pervading damp of a temperate chill. When the water settles on your skin and coats your car with ice and works its way into every crack and crevice, where it can quietly wick away all heat, that is when winter is truly painful. For all that, though, it is still a stunningly beautiful time of year.


Wet Winter

It isn't the chill or the chafe of the air
on a frigid and blustery day
or the ice as it glazes and kindles a glare
every morning that keeps me at bay;

I can suffer the frost through the swirling snow
and the nip and the grippe and the squall,
for the roar of the winter, all buffet and blow,
is an impotent rallying call.

No, the heart of the hardship, the bestial hold,
is that treacherous creep of the damp;
it invests every breath with a waterlogged cold,
every move with a crippling clamp,

as it burrows through fleece to the flesh and the bone,
not a nerve to be spurned in its spite.
I could weather the winter if left all alone,
but the damp will endure tonight.