I shouldn’t hate March, but I do.
This trickster of months promises spring,
then takes it away
dumping another eighteen inches
of thick, sticky snow
like clumps of brown sugar onto overburdened branches
I shouldn’t hate March,
except two days after winter, at last, retreated
while spring, newly born, hung back,
she died.
The weak winter sun was her last
The sky, a slab of concrete,
the trees, skeletal, ashen
the world colorless
March’s dull eyes had not yet found their shine
The frost, lingering, painted everything
white as death
I do hate March, I do
For wrestling the season away from winter
For pulling the sun close,
so it could thaw the frozen ground,
but not until after she sighed her last breath,
not until then!
She died, cheated of the first Magnolia blooms
Cheated, when March painted the dormant grass green
and coaxed the apple trees
into an explosion of buds.
Each crocus, each daffodil, the color that blossomed to life
even as she faded from it—were a mockery.
March has branded everything she lost
into my soul.
Its long days of deprivation are situated
too close to abundance.
I do hate March, I do