A Message to Old Man Winter

PAD Challenge Day 3: For today’s prompt, write a message poem.

Long we have scanned your sovereignty

Of nature-offerings

And preyed over thermometers

In hope of warmer things

Often you smiled and we were sure

You would say something nice

Before you raked your fingers through

Steel vaults of snow and ice

…but now you scribble on the air

A kinder melody

And we have seen you linger where

The blossom stirs the tree

…and we have sensed within your grit

A hint of letting go

As if you too are tired of it;

These signatures of snow

Your message is a slow strip-tease

On fields layered knee-deep

Our pulses quicken as you ease

Dark furrow from your keep

We linger longer and freely

Beneath your sun-kissed scrawl

Ah, maybe you are not really

An old brute after all

© Janet Martin