Winter, You Now Suck

There.  I've said it.  Despite all my poetic expressions of love for winter, for white snow, for clear night skies, and refreshingly cold air, I am begging for a divorce from winter.

Our 10-day forecast here in Iowa predicts continued cold through March 6, with daytime temperatures never getting above 20, and most nights going below zero.  One of those coming nights is expected to be -23!  That's the real temperature, none of that candyass windchill stuff.

I never thought I'd beg for mud season.

 It has been a hard winter, and now it's setting in to be a long and bitterly cold one.

Iowa got real cold sometime before Thanksgiving.  I know this because I wrote a poem about a frozen dead pig on the side of the road.  Around the same time, we received our first measurable snowfall and we haven't seen the ground since, or the dead pig.   Most areas have received more than 50 inches of snow so far.  It is piled in rugged white mountains along country roads and in parking lots in town.

I don't mind the snow so much, but this bone-rattling cold is taking a toll on everyone.  In town, the ground is frozen solid more than two feet down. Nearly 200 homes and businesses have frozen sewer lines and water pipes.  The diner is slower than a typical February.  The check-out girls at the local Fareway talk about how quiet the store is these days.  The cold is all we can talk about; it's our devil.

We try to convince ourselves that spring is 'just around the corner', something we say at the beginning of every February, because we know the end of February starts the Great Thaw, and the ground becomes a saturated sponge of mud and slush, unleashing our first dreams of spring blossoms.

We know spring is near, but no one is buying it.