february eve
one twelfth of the year
seemingly gone in a heartbeat
frozen in time
in the northern hemisphere
literally & figuratively
good news on the horizon
or so I would like to think—
a cloudy groundhog morning
a bright red valentine’s day
a national holiday soon to arrive
one of these mondays
but what of the prior
thirty-one days
locked inside a capsule nobody
wants to open
tossed without much thought
perhaps into the sea
like a message in a bottle
or buried beneath the sand
twenty-eight paces from an oasis
like some half-hearted promise
january two thousand twenty-three
copyright j matthew waters
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