February Days
The thing is that I’ve always known
these February days, when sky
loses its lustre like a fish’s eye.
These days! I can still see
my mother white-faced in a chair
carried through white snow to the doctor’s car…
What I first saw was grey
or mezzotint, perhaps, but you
set off with colours, green and red and blue.
Out in the garden under trees
loose clothes aflutter in the breeze:
an August baby greets the world at ease
and that is why the sun shines through
your optimistic take on who,
and what on earth the world is coming to –
and sometimes why you need to use
a smudge of February haze
to mitigate the keenness of your gaze.
