Goodbye to Cold?
Hello to you in 3004*
From me, a thousand years before
Welcoming this frosty morning
Contemplating global warming
Cold’s become my great delight
Fields of sparkles in the light
I love the cold and mourn its death
Mornings of billowing misty breath
Of sparkling frost on car and lawn
Diamond-white on grass at dawn
Fingers cold on bicycle bars
Sweaters, wool socks, cozy scarves
Can it be that you are yearning
For the cold that I’ve been learning
May soon be beyond returning?
Do you look back on today
To long ago and far away
As often I do to earlier times
Of natural places, natural climes?
The full moon, white like winter snow,
Casts its light on the world below
And seems to say, detached and clear,
That hearts for whom the earth is dear
And minds that built so much so fast
Can stop and think . . . and let cold last
And so are you, way up ahead,
In the future that I dread?
Or did we turn the other way
And make our precious winters stay?
Katie Kauffman
Seattle, Washington, USA
*This poem was written in 2004 and is about weather in the northwest United States.