Europe's Winter Agony

A pedestrian walks along the Inn river near Bever in the snowy Engadin valley in the Swiss Alps located in the canton of Grisons, Switzerland, Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012. Europe was hit by a cold spell with temperatures plummeting far below the freezing point. (AP Photo/Keystone/Arno Balzarini)

There is a deadly bite in the icy chill
that nature has presented in the winter
landscape to further confuse the volatile
issue of climate change which has electrified
the discourse between believers and
deniers in the battle over human
activated environmental change
impacting the globe so troublingly.

Europe is being bombarded by
nature's elemental weather conditions
severely trying humankind's
ingenuity in evading atmospheric
disasters where the struggle to
survive is countered by conditions
powerfully and fully inimical
to mere human circumvention.

Nature seems to indulge, from time
to time, in these challenges carelessly
thrown into the face of our placid
pride, our belief in our ability to
successfully manipulate and intervene
with solutions that defy and deny
her majestic might and terror.

The merciless winds that blow ill will
producing the Antarctic chill where none
should be, that flash-freezes all before it,
takes the vulnerable directly into the
outstretched arms of the Angel of Death,
collaborating helpfully with nature's
spontaneous, brief lesson in humble defeat.

Humankind's clever inventions and
timeless exertions in building structures
to protect from the elements, the
engineering of water flow and extraction
of energy sources, manufacture of vehicles,
building of roadways, all brought to a
stuttering halt in a frozen diorama
of utter and final surrender.