Cruelest month indeed,
even for those who don’t plunge
hands into dirt, turn
soil in hopes of harvest. Implicit
month of promise, when some
days the sun is an absent lover
returned even though
he never left the room. Something

      like that. Some warmth

to soften the rimed edges
of my heart, some color
splashed in the empty corners.
Something more than the placebo-
action of turning catalog pages,
their florid images of seed packets, knobby-
legged bushes, leafy stubs.
Their funky names, grandifloral premises.
For me, I simply want
a single rose

     to keep its promise.