As the hot water runs prematurely cold
Do I step into
A bath half empty or half full?
Do the spotless clothes and sparkling plates
Embrace and serve me,
Or mock and hinder, having
Squandered all warmth in unattended day?

I am facing both ways –
A shoot shivering into hapless Spring
Wondering:
Will this release from waiting
Wind up into tendrils of gold,
Or fall back, burnt by a cold snap?

Do they dread the Spring?
Or is it a joyful surge again into outward being –
Not fearful of remembered, wrestling lives
Of cold, drought and strangulation?

Ambiguously somehow,
Hope and retraction disquietly hang
On this balance day.