Along potholed ruelles, plowed rough and high, lie last December’s snows with jagged firn from months when I, in numb good-night, have curled up in the company of crows. My roof is tempest-proof, my kitchen bright; still, a bleak expanse blinds my bedroom’s line of sight as if to tease, in squalls of gusting, icy sibilance, that somewhere, past this sepulchre, past trees shrouded in Lenten brume, daffodils and bumblebees won’t make it through the hard earth. Yet I know the pond will boom, the wild geese will return. They always do. And so it is I cope with winter.…