The Sun Out Loud

Smell of the end of winter,
warm weather beginning,
warmth cut through
with echoes the soul craves.
After the first winter here,
between its end and new
beginning, a rush of surprise,
a body's joy never there
in warmer climates

Winter in Massachusetts
rain followed snow, bone cold.
Other than there, and here,
you were lucky to have
so few winters in your life,
continual warmth that held
as long as you sang to the sun

I was happy: One warm day
I said to myself, I am alive!
walking the landscape
of birdsong, of horses
switching their tails, neighing,
cropping pasture grass.
Animals and weather,
silences to calm
what was startled

Now the end of winter
echoes from the first year here
living someplace never
to be known. Is there time
to know life alone is enough
in the only skin there is
and will ever be

(25-28 March 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander