When winter lingers and the grey refuses to yield, the weight of the burden can be too much to bear. As though the shroudy haze is heavy. It has a weight all its own. Time and time again, now, I've watched as the last long weeks of winter call captive a spirit. Weariness smothers when light cannot navigate the clouds. It's not a seasonal disorder. It is an annual phenomenon, when you live in the land of snow and clouds. We can discuss the occurance a time or two. We can negate the trend, but life requires light. Levity. When reluctant she tickles the clouds back from the horizon, there the infermed lie trapped beneath the weight of greyness. I can smell the shift that no groundhog can predict. We wait to sow the seeds. We wait to scrub mud splashes from windows, gloomy. We wait to stow the mittens away for next year. Once again, winter elected to holdfast. In her delay, spring s-l-o-w-l-y danced into frame. There, loved ones stumble in the dense fog of gloom. A stalled