It’s cold and bleak out there this morning.  Seems like every morning…and afternoon…and evening…and especially nighttime.  Always seems so close to nighttime.

When will it end?  When will it ever end?

The winds blow cold and hard, pushing all that happens to be in the way; relentless, howling, unnerving.

The sun has forgotten how to shine and cast its warmth.  It will not emerge to offer hope for a new and warming day ahead for us.

Precipitation falls as snow, then rain, and then returns to snow again.  Covering the ground and covering the tracks of all of the creatures who dare roam the killing frost of day and night.

The moon, full and eerie, casts a reflected light down and then again off of the frozen surface of the too many snowfalls, cold and hard but illuminating enough for those creatures who roam the night in search of sustenance and furthering life.

The sounds and the sound.  The echo is a dead echo and the sound the sound of the tomb.  Feet break through the frozen surface of some newly fallen crust of snow that has frozen over just enough to offer resistance to those who would tread there, lightly or otherwise.  Try to run but you won’t get far- it is too slick and far too deep and is nothing else but dangerous.

Temperatures that will kill.  Heat can do the same over time but this cold, this bitter, lifeless, brutal cold will kill, can kill, in a very short amount of time.  All that was life before may be no more after such a spell as we have had.  We will, still, have to wait and see what survives it.

Warmer days have always come to chase away the bonechill and make us well again.  But must that always be so?  Could it come to pass that one time, perhaps even this time, the cold will stay to keep us in or kill us if we wander out?  Must we stay locked in our quarters not only for this season but for all of the rest as well?

It could happen.  No one knows when the sun may blink away or the earth repeal its spin.  And then we would be forced finally to stay inside and shiver until even that was not enough to save our very bones.

Keep those in power long enough and we will all feel it soon enough.