A Year of Poems: February

February has an interesting history as a month (depending on how you define "interesting"). It's the month you have to stop and think about; does it have 28 days this year or 29? (Hint: This year is divisible by 4.)

The word februare means "to purify" in the dialect of the ancient Sabine tribe; February was the month used to honor the dead and perform ceremonies of purification. 

If you're someone who makes a lot of resolutions January 1, this is the month when those chickens of intention come home to roost. If one of them had to do with organizing a closet or a garage or the whole dang place and this strangely has not yet occurred, you might approach it as a ceremony of purification and tell people you planned to do it in February all along. You're right on schedule—although you'd better hustle since it's still shorter than all the other months.

This idea of purification also fits with the Celtic celebration of Imbolc February 1-2. As a celebration of the coming spring and rebirth, it honors the Celtic goddess Brigid. Flowers have already started to bloom where I live, so yes, spring is on its way.

"February 29" by Jane Hirschfield

An extra day—

Accidental, surely:
the made calendar stumbling over the real

"Aquarium, February" by Liz Ahl

When ice outside makes daggers of the grass,
I come to where the tides of life still flow.
The water here still moves behind the glass.

"February Evening in New York" by Denise Levertov

 Prospect of sky
    wedged into avenues, left at the ends of streets,   
    west sky, east sky: more life tonight! A range   
    of open time at winter's outskirts.

"February" by Margaret Atwood

February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.

"February" by Bill Christopherson

when things in need of doing go undone
and things that can't be undone come to call,
muttering recriminations at the door,
and buried ambitions rise up through the floor

"February" by Michael Field

Learn more about the collaboration of two women writing under the pseudonym "Michael Field." This one is short; presented in its entirety.

Gay lucidity,
Not yet sunshine, in the air;
Tingling secrets hidden everywhere,
Each at watch for each;
Sap within the hillside beech,
Not a leaf to see.

"The Brook in February" by Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

A snowy path for squirrel and fox,
It winds between the wintry firs.
Snow-muffled are its iron rocks,
And o'er its stillness nothing stirs.

"Late February" by Ted Kooser

But such a spring is brief;
by five o’clock
the chill of sundown,
darkness, the blue TVs
flashing like storms
in the picture windows,
the yards gone gray,

"February" by Jill Osier

I curse this month, all it wants 

to be. Its lot is the same
each time, unthawed. 

Yet it taunts.
Dreamer month!

"February" by Tamiko Beyer

Now, a ball of twine in the grey sky. The sun rolls low on the horizon. Hangs. Then dips back down again, wind howling us into night.

Inside the erratic rhythm of this wavering flame, I conjure the potent sky of the longest day. Seeds with a whole galaxy inside them. Cicadas vibrating in the alders.