on analysis

quiescent as sleep,
the winter bulb accepts the possibility
it won't be warm for quite some time,
that the rain will come and nearly
untether everything,
and that no one will come to watch what's happening,
or nurse it back into the earth,
or offer gentle, soothing words
to hasten the coming of spring.

the bulb knows about spring, somehow.
does not ask, of winter,
"where are you going with all this weather?"
does not beg to be released
from the hardship of waiting,
does not complain, or tap an irritated foot,
or wonder about what it did to deserve
the roiling, mulchy turmoil underfoot.

it simply does its bulb thing,
forging a temporary truce with January which,
by April, has turned into a decent acquaintanceship,
which has led to a certain forgiveness, and which leads, one day,
to a burst of yellow bloom,
climbing, inch by inch, and without apology,
out of the exhausted, yielding dark.