December First

My goal is to write and post a poem the first of every month. As I was working on the poem below, I was wondering why am I writing a poem about Spring when the days are gray and short, the air is wet, and Christmas music is insidiously playing everywhere? I just kept plucking away at it, until it emerged finished. I did want to write a poem that had a different mood than Last Night's Words, and so here it is:

First Breeze

windows wearing last season’s dirt
loudly complain as she pries them
from their slumber
to let in the first delicate spring breeze

she sweeps winter’s remains from the front steps
old crackly leaves
held together by their hardened veins
a forgotten flip-flop from her son’s foot
rolled newspapers that spent the winter abandoned
stale headlines peeling away

she carries out the potted philodendron
let out like a prisoner given yard time
a ribbon from her son’s birthday party still tied to a leaf
the soil mostly watered away
leaving indecently exposed roots

she brushes off the white plastic lawn chair
reclines in it and reaches for her dull woolen hat
pulling it free she tosses it onto the mottled yard
shakes out her hair
inhales the breeze
and smiles at the weatherworn apple tree
its branches blistering with half-baked buds