December Storms

With shorter days and longer nights
came winter’s bleakness all-too soon.
Dark water gleams with thin ice floes
reflecting the cold winter moon.

Lake Michigan has many moods;
now, waves pile up and soon begin
to pummel piers, then breach the shore.
Today those heavy gales came in

from northern lakes; they send stout ships
in search of harbor, heeding shoals.
This is the time that does depress
all land-bound, small-craft sailors’ souls.

I watch the swarm of fussing gulls;
they wheel about, then dive and soar.
Now, heavy snowfall dims my view,
brought in by raging storms that roar

toward the shore. I fight their force
at every step with heaving lungs.
The angry lake--her leaping waves—
those gusts now shriek in hellish tongues,

then rush the dunes, brown grassy slopes
and bend my poplars in assault
with force eight on the Beaumont scale.
I turn toward our house, then halt—

Although still safe from water’s reach,
it’s well within the grasp of storm
that tears away the boat house roof;
lights go off, yet the house is warm,

but May is far away. I dream
of sails filled with a springtime breeze
on calm Lake Michigan, without
bleak clouds and winter’s mental freeze.