January Thaw

Mid-winter warmth

Sweet smells of earth fill the air

Briefly

With the damp aroma that parodies spring

As the snow-melt

Drip, drip, drips

Down onto the still-green grass

And black mud.

The lie of it

Drawing children outside mittenless

Coats undone

To bound about in heat

That in midsummer

Would be called cold.

Enjoy, while it is here,

That brief sun that warms the frosted ground

Kissing the earth with light long-hidden.

Turn your face upward

Toward the fickle star

That suffuses your closed eyelids

With the firefly glow

Of scarlet, blood-pounding life.

Hoard that warmth you thought you felt today

Sew it into your fabric

That tomorrow’s blizzard may seek and cut and keen

But freeze not you.