A Long, Gray Season Poem by David Welch

It settles over the horizon,
gray, dark smears of gray,
and above it casts a pall
of overcast. Ominous it looms,
but no thunder comes,
it won't come again until
spring warmth leaches back
into dry, dismal air.

Gray season has settled in,
from All Hallow's Eve until
a distant day of fool's,
It wraps the north, blots the sun
to a dim point of distant,
dying light.

The world starts as brown,
then flakes fall, sleet,
rain that freezes and dooms
drivers everywhere.
Brown to white, the white
mottles with the gray,
and all other colors fade,
save stalwart evergreens.

Cold comes, wraps around you,
gets within you.
Turn on lights to avoid it,
start fires to undo it,
warm showers to defy it,
but it's there, pressing,
day after day, until you feel
that cold and gray are forever,
reason be damned.

It's a long, gray season,
and it fits a gray mind.
So I rest, then I revel.