The Winter Poem by Briony Nicholls

The sun sets with loving certainty
The evening cold, that signals the ensuring frost, quietly descends
Finding its way into my sinews and bones,
Quietly attacking their soft plush centres.

The world is as it should be, vigorous and virile throughout.
It is only my physical body that is the traitor now
As it starts its slow meandering drive towards
The ruin they have been anticipating

The dark cavern my dreams have been tip-toeing around
Trying to not be too blunt or obvious.
But now the death-knells are vocal and shrill
Revealing that I, as young and beautiful as I once was, will now

Only ever be like the dying autumn leaves
Without their renewed counterparts – or, should I say -
My corporeal recycle through the earth will have nothing to do with
Me, for I, the real “I” that I am, will be long gone by then.

My time now will forever have that quiet desperate quality
As I scour the world to witness its grand majestic vitality
I can only ever come home each day to a dying, shrinking mass
The world and I forever drifting apart, piece by piece.