The Off Season

This poem describes an imagined trip to a place in upstate New York where I spend much of the summer and where the winters are unbearably bitter.

                                                          The Off Season


                                               Hibernation looks like death.
                                               The summer homes are shielded
                                               from the snow in canvas shrouds,
                                               smothering what they protect.
                                               The owners have made their choice:
                                               better mold in the living room
                                               than snow drifts on the front porch
                                               as their houses hold their breaths
                                               until the land is warm again.
                                               The winter wind tries to blow
                                               and bully me downhill where
                                               spring is trapped beneath the ice
                                               of a lake as gray as the sky.
                                               Fishermen have made holes there
                                               so it can barely survive
                                               another cold, long March.