The snow
covers the shrubs
like a wrinkled sheet.
Only a few days to March,
and February will return
to its drawer.
It is the cacti of time,
sterile,
dry,
the fluffy blizzards of spring
have not appeared.
Fiddle heads coming up
through the earth
like tiny swans.
The dishes of crocus
taken from a cabinet
for a tea of dew.
In the rinsed light of February,
I see only solitude,
an empty shore,
an invisibility
that life doesn’t enter.
My eyes tear with cold.
My heart
hungry for spring’s tenderness.
The green shoots
that feed creatures
that could not hibernate,
that foraged in the cold,
and finally grew tired.
Looking for the end
of all time,
the beginning of birth,
like a ring
inside the fortress
of a tree,
counting the years.