WINTER IS AN ANGRY GOD

Winter is an angry god, a skeptical disciple of human knowledge, but knowing wherein we live and wherein we die. He loves the frailty best because it is easily exploited. He mingles with the depressive as well as the physical aspects of our natures. He is a killer of such prodigality that he never stoops to a mea culpa or even a 'damn'.

He loves the death, oh especially the death. He is an academic of the ill will, of the contagion, of the eventual hopelessness that engulfs us all by the ides of March. But he isn't through, he has oftentimes a month of cruelty left.

I can see his evil face in the clouds, in the parts of nature that a month ago I loved the best. He takes no notice of me, my desires, my needs. No, none of that, but he knows whence I have prepared for him. He knows the darkness of my soul as he approaches. He knows the weary of the earth. He laps up despair like sustenance and feeds it back.

I know I must be gone. Close up this house and make for a land where freezing isn't the norm.

The product of despair and ill will is destruction and there will be plenty of that this season. Maybe he won't be able to find me. Maybe.