Nature feigns to be asleep: Beetles burrow and disappear—

Monarchs migrate south–crows behave like tombs–

So, Winter readies himself, gingered by cheer,

With Snow and the Old North Wind his constant boons.

But I the while, sigh–chastened—and retire inside.

It is time to think and bemoan my muse until warmer rays abide.

Yet, beneath this ice, walleye, trout, and pike still swim—marshes shelter the marigold—

Where the rapids lately fell, these mountains stay working things!

Blooms and berries are sure to return, and roses ride out this cold.

It cannot be long before Creation stirs, along with April’s robin wings!

Then, Spring shall be a dream no more! Nor sun, nor rain, nor poem!

The spruce grows bluer then. The birch stretches out again.

The forests welcome fields and streams. Columbines crown the slopes. And Hope reigns!

In a storm cloud’s zest! In a newborn lamb! In a honeycomb!

 

Biography: I have been teaching college-level English composition and literature courses since 2010, but I have been writing poetry since I was a teenager. Several of my poems have been published in peer-reviewed journals, popular magazines, and newspapers, in print and online. Indeed, I am delighted to have my work selected to appear in The Aims Review. The sonnet is my favorite poetic form, and I wrote one of my four doctoral exams about this genre. In this sonnet, my composition is partly out of a personal rebellion against winter and to use nature as an anecdote of depression and melancholy. In full confession, this poem is my response to the romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Work without Hope” (1825), which is also a sonnet.