...is setting in,
Like ice around our edges,
Like skies drunk on cloud cover,
Like sun strained through a coffee mug,
Like stories with too little beginning and
Too much end.

So I'm stealing food from squirrels and stashing it
In a grinning, hollowed tree;
I'm freezing words to hang on rafters
So they'll thaw out in the spring;
I'm taking hearts out of the public,
Washing 'til they're bright and clean,
Then burying them beneath the snowdrifts
With a flag to mark the scene

...of the sin,
Like hares lost in hedges
Like luck stored in brittle clovers,
Like embers leeching into the hearth rug,
Like a car trying for 70 around that
Frosted bend.

[In other words - it's time to break out thicker jackets.]