The Bee-and-Flower Thing

One wants to trust the fumbles that this meteorological
pale Interim of Ambiguity may well be making toward
new warmth and plant life and the formal end of Winter –
but in Manhattan what emerges is a random scrabbling:

convergence of the frightened, awkward new into the broken
life-defying old: as if some ancient pious virgin queen were
grumpily parading, coldly growling at the ground, examining
its cracks and pot holes to decree that they continue on

as scrubby concrete out of penance for innumerable city sins:
that brown dead grass remain as inadvertent cover for
occasional small shoots of something that you hadn’t better
bet on. Splintered craggy dawn too far from daisies

blooming on a verdant lawn to let you think that anything
will ever bring about the bee-and-flower thing. One chooses
to suppose that somehow, anyway, against the evidence,
the queen will be deposed – and there’ll be Spring.

.