Instead of Spring

One year, it kept on snowing

and spring failed to appear.

Ground floor entrances were

buried, so we skied in and out

of second story windows.

The only way to find food was

by helicopter or dog sled. We flew in

extra dogs to help keep the trails packed.

It saved a lot of wear on highways

and since traffic lights were useless,

we shut down all the windmills. We

special-ordered barrels and parachutes.

When seed catalogs arrived, we burned

them in the barrels to keep the dogs warm.

We kept parachutes wrapped in backpacks

in case we needed a doctor or hospital.

We never discovered where spring

had gone but after the melt and

after the mud, we found roses

and peonies in full bloom,

as well as grasshoppers and

red-winged blackbirds

in the fields.