In Praise Of Winter Poem by Ronald Wallace

It was the summer of mold,
mildew and rot, the windowsills
rife with decay, the old
siding warped, or shot.
The nettles and prickly ash crowded
the house, plotting their insidious
takeover, holding us hostage.
And not just to the world around us:
your retina detached, hurled
your sight to the winds that were
hot and heavy and not at all
conducive to respite or reprieve
or seeing at all clearly through
the rank humidity and haze.

But now, November has put
everything on hold. The cold
has frozen the summer in place
under its white veneer. What
a sight! There's nowhere to go
and nothing to be done! Nothing
changes or flows! Everything is
blessedly static and definable —
house, tree, and field, these
solid citizens of inertia, set in
their ways. All praise to winter
with its vitrectomies of light,
lasered tight, its bones bleached
and stowed, going nowhere!