**Poetry: February

 February 

The quiet will lure you
into thinking the world is one. 

But even the present is not singular-

It holds what is gone
ensconced beneath ice and snow,

tucked in to the roots
of a tulip tree
that has stood here longer
than any of these gray squirrels

seeking shelter there now. 

The ewe keens 
while giving birth- 

for what is lost lingers
still in the new. 

Everything leans into belonging-
and fears surrender.

You could stop here, pause, 

try to barricade yourself

from the enmeshed world. 

But branches continue anyway

to declare
honest praise for the sky.

A cardinal dashes
red feathers
regardless
of risk

and the solitary skunk
curls in to the body
of another.

February knows you could die
here alone, frozen,

or love--

the winter survived only
by what we will do for warmth.