Mistress Winter!

Tendrils of cold,

Twisting, spiralling, around and over you,

In the wintery twilight;

Probing for weakness,

Delivering sharp chills at each fleeting touch;

Raising goose bumps to bursting,

And slowly attacking the feet with the onset of frostbite!

Mistress Winter,

You are a cruel and determined foe;

Insatiable in your pursuit of the living for their warmth,

With an age old repertoire of traps, tricks and feints at her disposal,

And, an abundance of patience-

Like a huntress, harrying her prey,

Until it’s found cornered and covering;

Before, finally, setting in for the kill:

In ruthless single-mindedness given a chance!

So, don’t fall victim to this Huntress Winter’s feints,

Wrap up warm and offer her only a passing shiver,

When what she longs for is something far more grievous,

To add to the growing collection of trophies from this season’s tally of kills.

Lake of Salvation

Plucking at the strings of emotion,

Bringing a masterpiece casually into being,

A soloist’s rendition mirrors your condition;

Like the crown of flowers nestling on your head,

Fluttering in the gentle breeze,

Slowly loosing each of its petals to the wind,

Falling away, and leaving only stem and nettles,

To soak on the surface of a lake of tears,

Before submerging and resting at the basin to be covered in detritus,

An apt accompaniment to sudden bout of grief:

As you wade into the middle seeking elusive redemption,

From your memories and dreams, turned harassing nightmares of late,

Toward the inevitability of your own drowning,

For, the further you move out, the deeper the lake gets;

And, what you search for is nowhere to be found,

Searching for solace and meaning in a soloists melancholy,

As your tears trail down to join those of thousands of others’ before you,

Who have found themselves in a similar state,

For you are not the first, nor the last, to experience this feeling of loss;

And it is our feelings and not our memories, that are the true common bond and uniter, both then and now.