As mean-spirited January blusters out
in a final slam-door swirl of wind,
this year’s second hammering bout of flu finally abates.
Triple-wrapped; I venture to garden, hopeful – and there they are,
my White ladies, my Fair maids of February, a small gossip
of nodding heads, pristine milky-white, a-shimmer in pale sunlight.

And, as always, these simple heralds
pull my smile from storage – help me haul myself
from the dismal mire
of feeling constantly cold, sapped
by contagion, interminable bleakness outside- and bleaker still,
the pendulous iron-grey political miasma,
that seems to be sucking the country to a husk.