A Winter More Like Spring (2011)

For Tiny

Late February, the crocuses poke their heads
Through the snow-less landscape
In a season that never began
Schist rocks, remnants of a long-ago Ice Age,
Gleam like monuments
Women smile, their sweaters
Wrapped around their waists
Men hoist their jackets over one shoulder
While children scurry over monkey bars
Heedless as Bruegel and Auden’s plowman
To the portents all around
Ten winters ago, roses bloomed on Fifth Avenue
Amid the acrid smoke
I knew it would never snow
For what God would be so cruel as to sugar and crust 
The charred remains and twisted metal a few blocks away?
Today, I gaze into the glare of a seamless sky and wonder,
Where are you in the world?
And where, oh, where is spring when it always seems so?
For like those winters, your season was too brief.