Agonizing When

Yes, of course we agonize like this
every spring, wondering when winter 
will ever leave, and why spring is so 
ambivalently tardy. Glimpses of the past 
that our memory willingly serves up 
if we really press the matter recall 
other spring-time arrivals when we 
felt equally hard-put-upon by a crankily 
spent winter refusing to recognize 
its best-before date, and a timid spring
that cannot recall when its arrival date 
was meant to be surface. Surely, we 
convince ourselves, this year is much, 
much worse as it seems as though 
the cold will never relent, the snow 
will never melt, harsh winds blow
and as we concern ourselves over 
the welfare of returning birds and 
the lack of accessibility to green shoots
insects and anything else that migrants 
will seek to sustain themselves with
exhausted after their long flights
nature appears blithely unperturbed.