Early in December

There is snow. Black and white.
Cold outside. Warm here in the doorway
where you look out.

The cats can’t decide where they want to be.
Creatures of nature, this cold white stuff
baffles them. They run in and out all day long.

You are a creature of habit, disturbed by delays,
your schedule a mess. Your time for poetry
displaced by work and shoveling, a frustrating thing

for a man who has lost months of his life
in the morass of cancer and depression
and has just begun to reclaim yourself.

But no matter. You are alive, and the indications are
that you get the privilege of remaining that way
for the foreseeable future.

Let the weather interrupt. What is one more day,
against the prospect of seeing spring?
Light the fire, and savor the strange mixture

of heat and cold intermingling.
A picture of life against the skin
early in December.

About this poem. 

First real snow of the season. It’s a good day.

The picture was taken in my back yard.

Tom