February

sleet and sunshine:
trees are stripped black, pressed flat
against cloud and a blue rinse of sky

in a spinney of sycamores
the snowdrops are spendthrift

and under a drystone wall,
some water-source seeps
upon another bed of white

where grass-blades have clubbed
into outsize knobs of ice,
every tussock's a clump
of ice-crocuses

late winter's early spring

© Alec Rapkin