The Kingdom of Spring

It is snowing again this morning,
something expected, so commonplace
it is hardly worth noting,
another layer of frozen white,
beautiful yes, but becoming bland
in its sameness, no longer
exciting, no longer an adventure
or adversary. Even the jokes
have grown stale,
simply a fact, an abnormal normal
like the painful truth of a battered woman
or children in war, so normal in its cold brutality
that we don’t even complain, much less
rail against it,

Not me. I am done with sameness.
done with unrelenting white.
I will demand color, bonfires, gardens
where there are none.
I will play music too loud
and love with a heat that melts all it touches.

This,
this is the normal I will claim,
unnatural for this time of year,
defiant and full of child like laughter
and like a child, I will wonder
why others do not see my castles,
bright banners flying from the turrets
proclaiming the kingdom of spring
is here, no matter
the weather.

About this poem. 

When I was a child, I played make believe so strongly that sometimes, my pretend world was more real than my real world.

I’ve learned, when things are terrible, when life batters me over and over again, sometimes I simply have to pretend they are good anyway, in order to find my way to where they are really ARE good. Kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for.

Tom