Forty-eight New England Januaries
have taught me the folly of expectation:
You can expect the snow, you can even
build a life around expectation of the snow
or at least of the cold, but this doesn’t
guarantee that the snow or the cold will come.

Forty-eight years in New England
have taught me; but they haven’t
yet taught me how not to be surprised.

This forty-ninth year,
“astonished” is more the word.
Open water, and thawed ground,
skunk cabbage up before New Year’s,
forsythias a rumor I haven’t yet
confirmed, while word of a quince
blooming on Old Shirley Road
sends me across town on pilgrimage
to this fruiting and flowering, burning bush
I don’t believe I will find, but do.

Apple branches in the orchards
are the rosy-auburn of late winter.
I know the harm of early buds and late freezes;
I know I am not supposed to enjoy
this weather; I know I am supposed to say
as I was long ago taught, “We’ll pay,
we’ll all pay for it later.”

But still I think of the old story of the very good girl,
sent out in the snow by her very cruel family
to find strawberries in wintertime. And oh wonder!
The magical Month Brothers oblige, with some summer
and with the strawberries, because she is such a good girl.

I search for a sign in the newly growing green
of my own berry plants, but no, I’m not that good:
no buds, no blossoms, no fresh berries among the leaves,
just the oldest and most shriveled of fruits.

—Elizabeth Cooper