Colour hasn’t yet fully returned. The sky is

still painted in grey and white and the flowers

are pale green, or in the bud – waiting furled, the

tiny hopeful speck of a thought.  Spring is here

in potentia, a gift wrapped in winter paper,

marked do not open until. 

I’ve noticed birdsong the last couple of mornings –

a handful of sharp notes pecked through the big quiet.

It’s almost time, they are saying.  Keep going.

Meanwhile they’ll continue searching for real estate

in hedges and garden boxes and chimneys.

A place to enact their own February love story.

My body hasn’t yet shaken off the

winter, but soon, I hope.  Soon we’ll dust

off the last of the frost and stretch cold-brittle

arms towards the light – the point of a sundial marking

our progress through the dark part of the year.

Above all, it feels like a beginning – the letting out

of breath with a single whispered word: new.