by Sandra Lindow
The 26th of February, a monster
snow falls, white-outs and wonderland
robbing the world of daylight
by early afternoon, then cold,
startling, breath-breaking cold.
In the perennial bed, alas,
leafy greens ears of ambitious
crocuses and daffodils,
last week perked for spring,
now languish under eight inches
of snowy recrimination.
My flowered shirts and capri pants
call weakly from the closet,
“Remember us,” they cajole.
As I stand on the battlements
of a winter stretched too long,
their ghosts flutter before me
like distraught pastel moths.
To be warm, deep down,
to be, however briefly, dipped
and swizzled in sunshine
like crab in clarified butter
– that, that is my obsession.
As I shovel the front porch,
there are tickets to Florida
grinning on the bureau.
“Soon,” I whisper, “soon.”
Sandra Lindow is the longest serving regional vice president in the history of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. She lives in Menomonie, Wisconsin, where she teaches, writes, edits, and shovels snow when necessary, preferring, of course, to shovel well-mulched garden dirt instead. She has seven collections of poetry.
Portage Magazine 