Where does Winter go when it does not come South?

Does it travel North into cold-indifferent Space?

No, it would find no welcome nor fear there.

 

Perhaps it sends out guerilla-tendrils

To poke at us with wind and ice.

And after disabling us,

They withdraw back to the main body,

Glacial, low-to-the-ground and rocking with laughter.

 

But might it not have been cut and bloodied

By hungry pollutants yet untested,

Yet unsuspected . . .

And is dying?

 

We were not friends,

The Beast and I,

But we knew each other yearly.

 

We’ve had no Winter here this year,

And I feel cold.

 

                                                                               -   Jeffrey Eisenmesser, 1983