The Power to Chill

The March wind cries through the quarry,
harsh and howling. The trees rattle.
The last leaves of winter, the hangers-on
are torn one by one
from the last limbs of winter.

You shudder, and pull your collar high on your neck.
You have lived in that place,
where every vestige, even the dried corpses
of a life gone awry
was torn from you,
You know that slow, terrible death,
watching your remains blow across the landscape,
until all that is left are bare bones,
a skeleton of who and what you were.

You shudder, and it is not the cold.
It is the memory of being raw.
Even knowing the inevitability of spring,
the memory has the power to chill.

About this poem

Intensely personal. Perhaps two people will understand the reference. Yet many of you may understand the emotion.

Tom