February
By Donald Nitchie
Don’t be glum. Odds are you’ll survive
the winter, and probably several more.
Why not get your hopes up
for warm breezes off water and falling
asleep in the shade. Hang in there,
even as memory stalls like a car
as old as you are—but did you really
think you’d never grow old? You’re like
that road the town neglected for years,
more full of potholes than asphalt,
but that doesn’t mean you don’t go
somewhere—if only to the abandoned
playground littered with broken glass, weeds
around the edges. Even the swings are gone.
But if you listen, you can almost hear
the loose chains as kids jump off—even
on such a cold day, spring still weeks away.
Donald Nitchie’s poetry has been published by Cape Cod Review, Martha’s Vineyard Arts & Ideas, and “The Further Shore: Exploring Cape Cod and the Islands Through Poetry” (2021). For the past several years he has led Poetry Drop In, in-class writing sessions through the Island libraries — check their calendars. He lives in Chilmark.
Poets with a connection to Martha’s Vineyard are encouraged to submit poems to curator Laura Roosevelt at ldroosevelt@gmail.com.