"Stetson!
You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout?" - TS Eliot 'The Wasteland'
The birds don't mind a cold phase; bar the frost,
they and the vegetative world get by
sans heatwaves and rolled shirt sleeves, for the most
and never slate the color of the sky.
Fresh as the end of February will do
to steal a March on matters of the spring
as quarrels and courtship hullabaloo -
strip down to shiny pipes, clean everything.
We find, unearthed, our buried images:
croci run colors up the vernal mast,
revelations trigger primal urges,
as if the shrouds of decades could not last.
Life's improper; with its imprimatur
might rough-leaved, hardy primroses concur.
