Seasons

The ephemerality of the changing
seasons fails to impress us when we are
young. When we advance in years their
arrivals and departures become startlingly
abrupt and seasons whose longevity
were once seen as of equal duration
suddenly reveal themselves as those
that linger much too long and those we
grieve of as somehow becoming much
much too short, as though a shift in
reality has taken place in lock-step with
our migration from youth to adult to
maturity and beyond. Through our new
lenses we view the arrival of spring with
unalloyed joy and summer as a supreme
blessing while autumn has its moments
but winter though pleasant as a scenic
landscape has become a harsh and
excessively punishing environment
we seek to escape like songbirds turning
south from the boreal forests they inhabit
becoming inhospitable to the very life they
sustain. We mourn the shorter daylight
hours, the creeping cold, the shrinking 
garden soon to transition from blazing
colours the sun magnifies to a fiery gloss
recumbent deep and dark under a white
comforter whose presence lacks comfort.