This morning billows with cold, the whiteness of ice in the air and furred about every stalk and branch. Outside my window, the lime tree’s flabby leaves hang brown and unyielding, its branches hung with balls of grain and fat, and a flock of tits, blue, yellow, black and white peck and chirrup, as if the monster in the valley bottom, where the grass is stiff in white brocaded frost, has no fingers long enough to still their hot feathered hearts.

Earth breathes in her sleep,

wraps herself in frozen veils—

we dream warm spring dreams.