Winter Blues

By Marianne Jones

Uninvited Guest, digital illustration, boy Roland

Here

summer is as brief as youth.

Winter is an uninvited guest

who settles in to stay,

puts his muddy boots on the furniture,

complains about the service

and eats all the food.

Unwilling landlords,

we have no choice

but to grin and bear him

until his gentler sibling, whom he detests,

arrives, forcing him,

after much bluster,

to pack up and move further north.