a smoke in march with the boys

We sat, unbeknownst, with the lion of March.
His toothy grin in ours pressed into the bits of pipes,
alive as a scratched matchstick roaring
to the deep encouragement of a bourbon-soaked cherry.

And in the space, amid brothers' candlelit conversation:
better than blankets, we were wrapped into warm thoughts,
intermittent with dark, Irish thirst.

A thin, yellow wisp of sulfur appeared for a moment and hung
as a coarse, single hair on a mane
and faded with our frozen breaths, disappearing
from invisible lips
--like fear in the presence of the King of Spring,
our windows rattling with his southern blows--
as we drew courage

and love, exhausting Malaise
up into and under a cumulus pall gathering,
looming new growth over a season of doubt;
and like children on the neck of a great beast, we clung
to one another in the hope of new life

in a dissipating winter.