The fragile
sensibility
of winter
could only
reticently relinquish
its unyielding grip;

this cold wave
still deepens fear
that the spring’s
imminent
return is a matter of
opinion.

Stretching ears:
drops of melting ice!
Those chilled tears
might bring hope,
or might lengthen these slender
pikes of winter’s fire.

No false hopes.
No wasted regrets.
Our suns rise
and return,
vague practitioners passing
in cryptic degrees.

---

No matter how long it is, winter seems to take a terribly looooong time. And even though we (in my neck of the world) got a strange reprieve by not having too much cold weather until late in the year, when the cold weather finally arrived it slammed into us with an abysmal weight. And of course, everything gets jacked up because of the cold. Heating bills go up, cars die, freak accidents occur and change lives every day.

And that’s not all that’s been demolished: the old holidays that used to memorialize the passage and zenith of these times were torn away from us — some repackaged in commercialized fashion as a way to part us from our wealth, and some just lost, leaving some of us without a context for this seasonal dread. This mourning of brighter, warmer days. If the world was growing cold because it was dying, how long would we run on faith, before we became certain that we were doomed to freeze on its surface?

Man, I sure hope Spring is coming.

I’m still standing though — that’s something. Dreaming of the beach, without all the dancing weirdos. 😉