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February 2, 2026
Deliquesce
Winter plods like a
capricious and wild tramp
in shoes of river stones
through February’s gnawed
vestiges, boundless and out of rhyme.
The sky is a purple bruise
in this season of disappearance,
a dog off licking its wounds as
the sun shields itself behind a hill.
The trees have already lost their voices.
Bracing for absence,
firewood stacked upon apologies unsaid,
shuttered windows to a draft
closed off to grief,
wondering if it will pass.
The coming green, a renewal.
Snowdrops pushed through the ice, tepals soft
as the day’s first light.
Ponds holding their secrets
spill them all at once.