Okay, enough already!
It’s a futile misunderstanding of the world
to wish winter away -
like insensitive words.

Snow I love -
fresh flake and flood,
shoveling in the driveway
my blue coat turns white
as flour and we wake
to moonstone evergreens.

Yet no one claps or stands for ice
and a freezing March is without glory.
It is coats, boots, gloves, hat, scarf,
long underwear, sweaters, ear muffs,
on and off, on and off, and on and on,
and the sky stays white,
and everything is blurry gray,
and we’re growing old in the United States.
Indeed.  It’s easy to magnifying
what is liked least.

Okay. Acceptance baby -
bring it on!  I wish only to be here now.
In Minnesota.
I'm going out into this icy c..c..cold.

Under all these layers
is a warm me.

Hi hibiscus.
Here is water,
a kiss for the day,
leaf to my cheek,
a gentle word or two.

You are a rescue,
saved from snow,
like a neighborhood cat,
waiting for spring air.

On the iron stand
in the living room corner,
you grow tangerine flowers
in December.

If only we could
fold and unfold
the world,
then this Christmas
I would share
my feast with you!

Here I am thinking about him

in the middle of the night again,

about our passing ships.

Here I am stuck on ice,

waiting for spring,

the ice breaker to arrive.

There he sails, a pirate

with part of my treasure,
east into the sunrise,
receding in my binoculars.

I stroll the tarnished street
in fluid purple-gray winter,
not frozen white on white.

My coat is open
like a early summer sweater.
I’m searching.

There is always something
opening the day, bringing
you to a halt, causing

you to gasp and sigh.
Oh!  At the garden’s edge
sunflowers stand in winter,

frail, yet proud and undeterred.
They are taller then me,
charcoal lined, light and strong


not crumbling with a touch,
melancholy silhouettes, seeming
shadows of old soldiers and dancers.

They are pearl-gray statues
garden-made, guarding
the ground till spring.

Off Medication

He  searches and questions
from across the table,
beside her on the church pew.
She feels it between them
his searching and questions
and begins to think again:
I am not good enough.
I am not good enough.

I am not good enough grows.

She searches and questions
at the table, during work,
unable to sleep.
She searches and questions
into a deep, falling night.
It is a mission of destruction.
How easily she breaks
for she is not good enough.
She has never been
and will never be
good enough.

Thank you for meeting
this late summer rose,

self doubt - spring-silver and indigo,

mockingbird with a broken wing,
intern of river songs,

with compliments, more

compliments, sincerely

to meet part of yourself
in me.

I need a shovel
to dig deep to find
my love for you.  No.
A backhoe won't even do.

Years a companion
easy to find,
years again till finally lost,
my love for you.

I gave up,
left you for dead,
so far-away-cold
my love for you.

But love is never gone
or it was not love.
Maybe it was never
love at all.