The Winter Comes

 
The Winter Comes
   
The winter comes, with darkness and with cold,
With shortened days and nights of huddling close.
The winter comes, with freezing rain and sleet,
With blizzards, biting winds and drifting snows.

The winter comes, with battling winds that bring
Those endless snows, those dark and brooding skies.
The winter comes, with long and freezing nights –
And weakened sun that struggles, slants and dies.

The winter comes, as autumn takes its leave,
With fevers, 'flus – with windows shuttered tight.
The winter comes, with sneezes, coughs and more,
As autumn leaves – and takes, with it, the light.

The winter comes and strips the trees of leaves,
It comes and taxes those, who're ailing, old.
The birds will flee – and huddled beasts will sleep,
For winter comes, with darkness and with cold.

2013 November 9th, Sat.
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn