i returned home in the middle of december
only to find that winter had waited for me,
sleeping above gray-brown skies
and teasing with days and days of rain.
on christmas eve around ten pm
i rode my bike out into the warm air
pushing back the trepidation with lungfuls
of impertinent wisconsin wind
as though displaying that the southwest
was not as magical as i wanted to believe.
out of anger or spite for me still believing,
january---my nemesis janus, opening and closing
with a bitter cackle aimed at my heart---
brought miles and miles of snow.
we were buried overnight,
the winds so wild and thick with flakes
i couldn't see a shadow's length ahead.
the next few days piled on more--
stores well padded from the previous months
of abstinence. even when it ceased to fall
the heavy gale grew drifts so high
as to barricade doors, shaking loose
all that had settled on roofs and branches
and creating dunes and sand-like patterns
across the empty fields and untouched roads.
i dug out tunnels in the night
and i raced through them to outrun the cold.
my face turned numb in minutes
and my tongue and eyes followed soon after,
but the heat i generated in my core
outshone even the street lamps
ablaze against the long-empty sky.
by the end of that mischievous janus,
the green grass had been revealed to me,
and so did the pale stars and hauntingly luminous moon pinned up in a vast heaven
i hadn't seen for weeks.
now the only white that comes is fog--
it lingers well into the mornings
and descends again on rainy nights,
leaving in its wake thin veils of frost
that cover every black and brown husk
protruding from the sallow ground like graves
and creeping along rotting deck wood,
plastic siding, rusty metal and damp cement
like mold of living glass. two days ago i saw
my rose bush was budding up already
and now today it shrivels back again--
bitten by this fickle world of hope and strife
and joy and pain all over and over again.
my rose bush doesn't know when to give up,
only when to try again when its love
is too eager for the onset of pitiful february.
oh, hello february. what seeds are you to sew?
