December is a memory now, the snow has

Been washed away, sheets of rain cleansing 

The frozen earth that slept beneath it and

Sending ethereal tendrils of fog to drift

Like spirits across the city streets.

All is silent there, not a sound is heard

And no wind blows in the unnatural warmth

Of that falling rain, a rain that will nonetheless

Quickly turn to ice as nature plots a different

Coarse, bearing North into January.

Tree limbs will become brittle old bones, easily

Broken as the temperature tries to find itself, lost

In the nowhere zone of thirty-four degrees it forces

Nature to compromise between rain and snow, an

Uneasy truce with dire consequences to follow.

Ice water tears mourn the passing of dead December

And the sun seeks shelter behind a brooding veil

Of swift moving clouds, even as it creeps towards

An unseen horizon; fraught with a kind of hopeless

Resignation it hides its face against the coming night.

END

“December Requiem”