Ode to Winter

(With due apologies to Johnny Keats)

Season of feasts and fellow feeling-ness,
Close bosom-friends of the maturing age:
Conspiring with the gang how to load and bless
With food and wines around the river’s edge;

To bend with the intoxication of smoky haze,
And fill our extended bellies to the core;
To swell the coffers of our tinted gaze
With a sweet Black Forest; or a couple more,

And still more, until the cholesterol creaks,
And the stomach turns as the diarrhoea drips,
And the head swirls while the vision freaks;
No more, you say, until the summer’s trips.