(noun: German (zane-zookt) yearning; wistful longing)

We hear it in friends’ voices in the coldest places,
in regions where they’ll be lucky to see spring

by May, that wistful longing for something
not icy and cold, or even just wet and cold.

Done with the flannel gray skies, the frost
crystallizing outside glass, the having to chip

ice out of the birdbath so they can drink, the
daily refilling of feeders for the feathered.

We do this—yearn for what isn’t, for what was—
this humanness of hankering so tugging at us

that we walk by the window and miss—look!—
droplets stretching into delicate-bulbed icicles,

the doily-like flakes decorating leaves,
starlings squabbling, their dark bodies speckled

like snowfall in these just-hanging-on months,
hungering in more ways than one for

the sustenance to come.

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Inspired by this video, “Winter” by Jamie Scott

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