O Mistress, Mistress,

Reptile Mistress,

Your eye is very dark, very bright,

And it never softens

Although you watch.

~from Lui et Elle by D. H. Lawrence

February

The cold grows colder, even as the days

grow longer, February’s mercury vapor light

buffing but not defrosting the bone-white

ground, crusty and treacherous underfoot.

This is the time of year that’s apt to put

a hammerlock on a healthy appetite,

old anxieties back into the night,

insomnia and nightmares into play;

when things in need of doing go undone

and things that can’t be undone come to call,

muttering recriminations at the door,

and buried ambitions rise up through the floor

and pin your wriggling shoulders to the wall;

and hope’s a reptile waiting for the sun.

~from February by Bill Christophersen

Source: Poetry (February 2002)