February
Sometimes a flag quietly appears
and leads one to a camp in the snow.
Oh, I am sick. I fade, I fall,
I curse this month, all it wants
to be. Its lot is the same
each time, unthawed.
Yet it taunts.
Dreamer month!
Another is just as warm,
as firm, as close to sweat and sigh
as I was, and this month
knows it. This month
sits close-lipped
and wise before the fire.
Credit
Copyright © 2018 Jill Osier. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in The Southern Review (Winter 2018).
Author
Jill Osier
Jill Osier’s chapbook from won the Poetry Society of America’s 2017 Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award.
Date Published
05/21/2018