A walk

A walk

The grey cold of winter rain
lashes face and hands and me.
Raven clouds dark as my damaged thoughts
lie overhead, threatening, sinister.
Muddy paths leading to muddy places
through trees scoured clean by loathsome storms.
Past verdant leaves indifferently slaughtered
scud across my shadowed dreary view.
Hearing no-one, seeing no-one and being no-one
trudging onward, slipping, stumbling, sliding, swearing.
My mood as black as longest night
companion to my wary winter woodland wander.
Sombre thoughts of death unfettered rise
unbidden to my mind.
I must escape this path, this wood, this life
or stay forever snared in this leafless, lifeless grove.
I reach the edge of brooding breathless copse
driven to the open fields of freedom before me.
And still the grey cold of winter rain
lashes face and hands and me.

07/02/2017