You can't shoot Winter like you can a raccoon,
Thought for months it stares at you defying you to try
When it dies, it keeps you up with its stink,
Buds bursting up from out of clay
Earth scent assaulting your senses
After five months of snow

You see it dying when you walk from your door,
Cracked brown palm snapping with flecks of green
Burning the body in pools of melting ice
Cobble stones poking up through the surface
So that the world seems to melt around you
Never to come together again in the same way

I don't hate other seasons, but I like winter's silence
Closed windows cutting off sounds of traffic
Construction and yelling kids
In winter, you can snuggle under camel hair and not think
With only the on and off of the heart to disturb you

Winter never coddles you. It never makes you think
The world is a pleasant place
Stinging your face and fingers if exposed.

But it dies so slowly, bits and pieces of its vast body
Falling from roof and gutter- Cracking as sharply as bone
You want to put it out of its misery
You want to shoot it between the eyes
But you just suffer along with it until the groaning stops
Watching spring leap over its corpse.

You can't kill spring either but that's a whole other story.