On another list they have a regular challenge to write a poem on a
particular theme. This was for one about the weather...
The Weather Man
In the last wood, he waits.
The leaves of his hair
are crisp with frost.
Old air is bleak along
the withered limbs.
He cranes his senses
for the echo
of sundered voices,
but only the wind speaks
and it has no language.
This is a ward, they said,
but he can see the trunks
decaying, smell
the rotting roots.
He has come to this,
the final winter
and weather is blowing
all the words away
into swirls of snow.
They cannot touch him
in his coldness
or breach the white wall.
So, he thinks,
as it ends,
shedding a tear
of ragged ice
for the world,
the world lost,
and all the warmth
wasted.
grasshopper
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