That’s it for winter,
the moment of tyranny
draped in white fog, hovering over
the land in shifting masses
agitating news channels
and personal verse.

Restlessness waits patiently
for summer’s cheerful waves
and mating season of birds
to course through my veins,
and from clarity on time’s
vantage point I fold up the past.

Is somewhere in this
cherry-blossom air, in this
country of the western world
where I have tested the boundaries
of my heart, a grain of promise
we see in a truce between foes?

My stockings are torn. If I step
outside I will be covered with dew.
By daybreak the final battle in Idlib
might at last be over. And, in the back
bedroom a piece of rubble sits
on the shelf, like triumph.