February

A Love Sonnet to February

Thank you for dancing translucent air,

And for carefully gifting more handfuls of light.

The new carpet is nice, if only temporary,

And beautifully covers the crispy, sleepy, unsightly

Ground with tabula rasa, shaken etch-o-sketch;

And for a few moments the trailing ribbons of our pasts

Vanish and we stand in our own fresh footsteps,

Nothing ahead but swoops and swirls and vastness!

Thanks, too, for the holiday in the middle of your heart

To give silent loves a voice and a shape, and a soft

Chocolate center.  Love exists in the sweet first curl

Of the L, the Ooo! of surprise, lip-bit V and E’s rising loft!

And since the end of you marks that the winter is old,

I forgive you for being so short and so cold.

-tl