The Long Winter Vigil
Beneath the wooden rafter’s weight
And beams with abandoned spider silk,
Where hearth once roared with living flame
Now but cinder, dust, and ends,
There he lingered still in a solitary will
In silence, half here and half else
A man grown thin by winter’s wrath
And exodus that never came
Decades true, the world behind
Forever buried under heaping snow,
For drifts had claimed his narrow lane
And choked the open vale below.
No carriage passed, no neighbor knocked,
Nary the sound of church bells tolling,
Only wind through splintered eaves
Creaking wood and this silent fear.
At dusk the light withdrew too soon,
Cowardly slipping from the sky,
Shadows crept like crawling things
Where understanding came to die.
The oil lamp hissed its trembling breath,
An ever-moving yellow eye,
That watched him pace the wooden floor
And listened to his muttering.
The wind attacking like a living thing
Circling, clawing, and shrieking wail,
It pressed its face to frozen glass
And screamed when hope had failed.
Through chimney top and open seam
It whispered without ceasing
Of graves beneath the frozen ground,
Where stiffened death awaits.
He spoke at first, just to keep the time
To the walls, a chair, visions of things
Recalling summer’s forgotten hum
Hues of color on yonder hill
But memory now cruel and thin,
Like this wretched house, weak and aged
Its warmth dissolved in icy blasts
The gnawing left him growing thin
His ragged beard kept frozen time
While fireless was the iron grate
His breath lay heavy in the room
A cold prophecy of fate
Each passing hour dealt another blow
The clock ever chiming
Until the silence between strokes
An angry muffled roar.
And in that roar, he heard it
A step beyond the creaky floor
Boot heels dragging upon his porch,
A knuckle tapping on his door.
He dared not rise, nor could he sit,
Nor trust what his own did hear
For winter makes of ghastly sounds
A terror all its own.
“Stop this nonsense” he cried into the storm,
“Thou art but air and night!”
But still it moaned of hunger and blight
Of something old that’s lost its way
It spoke direct to his buried fears
Aloud in a withering breath
Winter solitude, prolonged and deep,
Is always close to death.
His eyes grew wider,
Thoughts unmoored from shore
He saw in every darkened corner
A face not seen before.
His coat upon its lonely peg
Became a hunchback looking beast
And frost upon the windowpane
Took shapes grotesque and worn.
He laughed aloud, shook off the sight
Nothing that he could name
Yet the reflected within the room
And fed the mounting flame
Not firelight, but coiled within his chest
A thick serpent, moving pale and slow
Tightened with each gust that struck
His world in sheets of snow.
Days blurred, until night reigned,
The sun was but a rumor now
The sky a slab of ugly granite
That crushed all sense of joy.
Bread grew scarce, and sleep even more
And rational thinking thinner still
His shadow spoke in whispers now
Against his failing will.
Frenzied, he barred the windows tight
And stuffed each crack with cloth,
Yet still the wind found cunning ways
To speak and enter both
It sang of fields where none could tread
Till spring’s uncertain birth
But spring he’ll never see again
At least not on this earth.
One night, a night darker than the others
So dark it knows no dawn
He felt the house itself take shift
As though the world were gone.
The timbers groaned like ancient bones,
Panes rattled with madness,
And in the howl, he heard his name
Memories of earthly shame.
He lunged and opened the oaken door
Against all mortal sense of life,
And stood before the whitening void
Ready to offer penitence.
The snow received his faltering step
Without a sound or plea
A silent sea of endless white
Endless sheets across the night.
The wind embraced him as its own,
And wrapped him in its cry
His footprints vanished one by one
Erasing every moment passed
And in that hush where thought dissolves
When winter takes what winter claimed
The lashing gale pulled him in.
Now story tellers, the ones that know,
Speak low when winter storms begin,
Faint and wandering human sounds
Forever trapped upon the wind
For when the weight drives men astray
And hearth-fires wispy thin,
One hears the echo of a tortured mind
Souls we’ll never feel again.
Additional Reading
R.J. (Ralph) Schwartz is an American poet, author, website owner, and online publisher. His writing spans several poetry collections—ranging from spiritual and romantic to fear-driven explorations—and even extends into science fiction. Notable works include:
-
Hope – Inspirational and Spiritual Poetry
-
Things That Go Bump in the Night – Poetry of Fear and Fright
-
The Lover’s Thread – Poetry for Couples
-
Poetry of the Human Condition – The Ups and Downs of Modern Living
-
The Secrets of the Moon (a sci-fi novel co-authored with his son Sebastian J. Schwartz)
Schwartz’s work is described as purposefully wordy, richly descriptive, and thematically grounded in nature, romance, antiquity, and forgotten histories. He writes regularly on platforms he manages, including The Creative Exiles, a collaborative venue for writers, and The Gypsy Thread, which delves into offbeat histories, pagan lore, and poetry.
- The Republic of Perpetual Outrage - March 7, 2026
- Thoughts Over Coffee – The Cereal Taxonomy Crisis - February 25, 2026
- Normal Was The First Casualty - February 23, 2026
