Too Long a Winter

(Awarded Honorable Mention, Canadian Authors Association National Capital Branch, National Writing Contest, Poetry category. 2017.)

Through the kitchen window
spring air
caresses like fingertips on a cheek.

Spring air
scented with earth
as if soil particles thawed and dissolved into it
made it more complex than what it once was:

Winter air
clear, empty, vast
without content.

The air has melted.
A new season pulses
sap and blood on the rise, while

We sit silently at the kitchen table
frozen like winter air
our conversation polite
without content.

Hearts, like air, can melt.
But has it been too long a winter?