North Wind

Three Ships in a Gale, Willem van de Velde the Younger, 1652

Poem for the Twenty-Ninth Day of Lent

The wind is from the north. How long,
for how long must my body tense
and buckle with the frigid blast,
which sets its path against the pallid
rays of sun not near enough
this early spring to moderate
the chill? How many days, I wonder,
just how long will hope last in
this brazen resurrection of
the winter past, or will the coming
equinox and lilac buds
be my defense, these harbingers
of sweetness in the softer season
not so far from where I shiver
in the unforgiving wind?

And yet it ends, like every storm.
The wind will change its course and come
‘round from the south, its baggage light—
a surge of warmth and stories from
the sea and from the delta and
the river’s mouth, and from the poplars
at the shore and from the songbirds
that alight in them at evening,
when they’ve feasted and returned,
their appetites replete and nothing
more required of them than to be
grateful for the shelter of
a nest as night descends, affirming
though the sun is setting it shall
surely rise again.

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