The Thaw
The confidence of winter in repose
that it will stay
beyond the weight of several skies of snows,
camped on bare lawns,
cold-crusted, scoured by bleak, sub-zero winds--
that it is not taken in
by white-eyed suns so little like the sun
or days of blue skies bluer than summer days--
that it can afford to wait
with a strategy more serious, more deep
than just a sleep
intimidates.
But cracks appear, rents broaden, chasms grow,
brown trickles run,
coaxed by the leaning sun,
and join in gutters flowing down the street,
and running boys
chase with their kites white clouds across March skies,
and trees
unfreeze
themselves, branches, bare and numb,
burgeon with buds and territorial songs,
and wave with their waving arms the winds along,
and all that seemed too stiff, too fixed, too stony
cold to flow
melts down, quickens, divides
and begins
to flow.
Copyright 2010-2012 Paul Petrie