March Begins
/John Grey
February creeps into March.
Ground thaws but wind picks up the chill.
And drizzle is just snow in a gray disguise.
For birds, the mating season is dim memory.
Winter instincts preserve the current generation.
It’s not in them to propagate the next.
A homeless man curls up in the shelter
of an abandoned tenement’s stoop.
He’s wrapped in other’s donations
but neither the forlorn jacket
or moth-eaten sweater
looks like a kindness.
Winter colds linger on.
The sidewalks are a mix of slip and splash.
The walk by the river is the ghost of a summer stroll.
My hands plunge deep into my pockets.
They hold no other hand.
Author Statement:
The inspiration behind the poem is no more than the month of March itself. TS Eliot may consider April to be the cruelest month but, to my mind, that dubious honor belongs to the third month. The second line is the key. The temperature slowly rises but the wind blows more fiercely so that it feels just as miserable as what preceded it.
Bio: John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, Amazing Stories and Cantos.
