Despair

The condition of the noun occasioned

by the action of it as verb, a word,

in other words, of dual persuasion,

a singular two-part part of speech,

the noun of it having occurred,

having been brought into being,

despair leading therefore to despair,

here, but also somehow everywhere:

the chair, the coffee cup, the window,

those trees beyond it resignedly sighing

and yet enduring the continuing snow,

the winter it is to be hoped they sleep through,

unaware of winter birds not flying

but perched in ones and glum twos.

Also, huddled in a thicket, a doe,

possessed by her own cold woe.

Woe, an interjection and a noun,

a lament the doe, incapable of voicing,

still feels as the snow falls all around.

Only the snow does not feel it, falling

and falling, rejoicing

in its fall, its accumulation appalling

to all but itself, inhabiting the very air,

which is the place, also, of despair.

For air is the atmosphere of all,

conglomerate of gases, a vernacular term

without the least scientific wherewithal.

Air is also a song, and the song tonight

is snow, in the lee of each tree a berm

of it building, a thousand beams of white,

contributing to everything this sense of woe,

which comes and comes and comes, like snow.