The Old Man in Winter

December snows
coat ice windows
inside, my bony fleshless frame.
They bury,
insist that I must stay
in this coffin house
they have prepared for me.
I wail but the wind out-wails me.
I curse
but weather is the curses
often thousand like souls.
Landscape, damp and gray,
stark, skeletal trees bid me join them.
I cling to bed, to bannister,
as if that's any use.
Chills of past history,
fleeting echoes of old violence,
stains on the walls,
mocking doorways,
creaking staircases -
that's where the outside
gets its grim ideas.