February

Where two girls make a seam
A yellow war unzips.
Or where two ducks on a brown
Pond become two dogs
Cast in bronze, galloping
Beneath the halo of a yellow lamp.

Where a hole in the wall
Revealed the doll house
Occupied by lost parents.
Where the feathered headdress
Is worn to hear the ash
Describe its former life.

There is no winter there, only
An unloaded shallow.
No glass barrel where
Scissors snipped and wooed
The barren into lumber—
A million knots and hollows
Opened up --