meeting winter

How can you know Winter
if you have not stood on 
your porch and met him?
Face him briskly by,
his scratches raking your face,
down your back, 
rigid wicked shivers wrack your spine.
The night is clear.
The sky is wide open.
The greatness is greater,
the beauty more beautiful,
than the pain of the cold.
Winter tries with his screetching calls
to wrench this pleasure from me.
All rocks slide down the hill,
eventually.
For now, I greet the old man,
coming over the hill with his creaking bones
and his cane,
flailing at the leaves with his 
unpredictable breath
this way, or not, in the wind.
He nods at me a prescient nod,
long knotted hair and silvery beard waving,
and continues on his crooked way 
driving his icy winds
across this mountain top.
Later I retire 
to contemplate
this poem.