For the dverse haibun Monday prompt. Winter is coming, and it is not my favourite time of year.

In this country of hot summers and mild winters, frost is short and sharp, a stab in the back, the underhand blow that wilts the house plants left outdoors, that cracks terracotta pots with water left in them. It comes like a thief in the night, of cold moonlight and the diamond glitter of the stars. Faerie, it laps the grass stalks with furred tongue, and stings the lungs with the breath of the otherworld. Mornings break with the brittle tang of ice, and mist billows like taffeta clouds among the naked trees.
Too cold—like the deer, and the rabbits cowering beneath the ground, I long for the sun to rise warm and golden soft and send life coursing once again through these frozen veins.
Pale ice faces stare
from every hedge, cobweb-strung—
hunger stalks these fields.