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