Breaking Trail
Imbolc

We are so done with winter
we say
but the crust of cold is safe
in its own way.
No one expects us to grow anything
in frozen ground.
We can praise ourselves
for merely leaving the house.
The comfort of soup and late-night card games
and wool sweaters is getting habitual
but not yet thin.
In these months we make change
leave its boots in the hall
and close the door quickly to keep the warm air in.
We have turned our attention down
so as not be distracted by numb toes and cracked lips.
The indents in our blankets are round and tight,
protective.

When the stale air does make us stick
chilly cautious noses out
of our comfortable dens
we think ourelves whales
making one smooth surfacing for oxygen
before diving back with it to the untroubled deep.
In words we cheer the way the longer
daylight lifts and counts our ribs
but it is an uneasy joy
as a crack in the ice when you are
not quite in sight of shore.
The startling shadows possibility throws
do ask a question
but it is not whether there will be six weeks more winter.
There will
unless there be eight or ten.
It is will those weeks be short or long
and when you get there
and your winter shell splits open
of its own accord in the warmth,
will you be ready
as the dandelion
green and eager from weeks of drinking
the growing sun through a roof of snow
or will you be sodden and surprised
as a mitten dropped in December
the wanting still on your lips
hands still reaching tentatively for
something that has already
gently, inexorably, thrown itself
about your shoulders.

---

This poem is part of One Turning: Poems for the Wheel of the Year.