You come on so suddenly, cutting off autumn at the knees. Fall, as we call her in these parts, barely claims a month, once summer steps aside, before you gobble up what’s left of November. The calendar tells us we have 20 days of fall in the twelfth month, but you say, “Fuck that. Hope you like frosted windshields!” You have a dirty mouth, too.

If we followed Earth’s orbits strictly we would still be enjoying sweater weather, a nip in the air but nothing a little argyle fleece can’t fix. Come late March, we would feel the warm embrace of spring, there to defrost our noses and thaw our toeses. But you overstay your welcome, too, reaching sometimes into April, resisting spring’s urges. She, too, gets only a few weeks before the heat of summer takes the reigns.

In poetry, spring represents birth, or perhaps rebirth, but you are death, the end. Maybe you wouldn’t get such a bad rap if you didn’t kill off all the little plants. Thankfully, the trees are strong enough to hibernate until it’s warm again. But the critters hide from your icy breeze. The birds take to the fallout shelter.

You want me to wear shoes inside, but I want to free my feet. Your cold makes joints stiffen, muscles ache, skin dry, knees quake. You make me use rhyme, to describe your kind. That’s a near-rhyme, coriander and thyme. I’m no songwriter. You make me lose my thought; I’m distracted by lost feeling in my two little toes.

Snowflakes (you gave the clouds dry scalp, too) Kamikaze the windows. I hear you laughing with delight. Maybe that was only the wind.

But you have redeeming qualities. With your chilly air and snowy winds come Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, Festivus, and the new year. You make Adam Sandler relevant, again. Paul Newman’s half Jewish.

After the holidays, though, dear winter, you ought to give us a break. It’s stressful enough with the buying and the giving and the getting and the faux-liking and the returning. Then you hit us with more cold, more dark, more bitter, more sadness. Stevens says one must have been cold a long time to not think of misery in the sound of your wind. It’s no wonder more lives leave us when you visit.

Winter, you heartless turd, why can’t you just play nice?