The Longest Month

The Longest Month

The children will tell you
it's December,
the days crawling by like years
as new snow beckons
outdoor thrills
and Christmas looms
always justthisclose
but never
close
enough
or perhaps, if they considered,
they'd argue for May,
when the browngrey dullness
of winterscapes have
exploded
into blooms of color
and sunlight
and the warmth calls to them
to run
leap
play
but only
through schoolroom windows.
Children will tell you
and children are sure,
but there are matters in this world
beyond childish comprehension:
months into the seasonal gloom
when the memory of first flakes
has lost all of its charm
and cantankerous rodents
dream peacefully
of spring
after condemning the rest of us
to waking worlds of winter,
when bitter chill and
blasting snow
keep crocuses sleeping
past expiration dates,
when false lovers' holidays
foist pretend fire
into the silent kilns of
empty hearts,
ever-growing snowbanks
remind us of
what we learn each year
what melts away with the banks
each spring:
hell is not a place
of fire
and searing burning crackling
pain
hell is a landscape
endless, frozen,
cold
barren--
those whose eyes are open
are vouchsafed
a vision of it each year
if they choose to see.
February will end
and color return to the world,
but the wise
the adults
the seeing
know that it is the warmth and colors
that are the illusion,
as much as the
prognostications of
that weary woodchuck
and the flimsy arrows of
the churlish cherub,
and the chill of the
longest month
lives within us
waiting
waiting to freeze
to restrain
to pierce
the hearts of
those who believe in
spring
and joy
and love.
They do not exist.
They are cruel fabrications
thrust into the mind
by the devilish
interminable
monotonous
lonely
empty
snowbound month
of February.