a smoke in march with the boys

In that space amid brothers' candlelit conversation
intermittent with dark, Irish thirst...
Better than blankets! --We were wrapped into warm thoughts.

We sat with the lion of March,
His toothy grin in ours pressed into the bits of pipes,
ALIVE as the scratched matchsticks roaring
to the deep encouragement of bourbon-soaked cherries.
A thin, yellow wisp of sulfur appeared for a moment and hung
--a coarse, single hair on His mane.
It faded along with our frozen breaths,faded like our fears in the presence of the King of Spring,
though our windows rattled with His southernly blows.

We drew courage
and love,
exhausting malaise into a great cumulus pall gathering above,
looming pregnant with 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.