February
Lending fire to the setting
sun,
a cardinal, sitting in a budded magnolia,
hastens the snow.
Warmed by his flame,
I vision a mist of star flowers
above the grass in the oak grove
and a wren in the forsythia.
Orange melts across the sky,
and the earth tilts toward the sun.
John Groppe is a Professor Emeritus of English at Saint Joseph's College, Rensselaer, Indiana, and a co-editor of From the Edge of the Prairie, an annual magazine of poetry, prose, and art by writers from Northwest Indiana or focusing on northwest Indiana. His poetry has appeared in Snowy Egret, Crossroads, Theology Today, and other publications.