The Ofi Press Magazine

 By Judith Mensch, USA (Published in Issue 7)

February Green

The picture on the calendar teases me with green grass

Is this supposed to inspire me on the cold mid-winter day

A day when the sky shows no sun

The air reveals no warmth

The ground unyielding in its cold

Where is this green grass located anyway

I find no comfort in the knowing

This green was captured in another season

A season we are assured will return

(just as it will leave again)

my soul is much too heavy today

to be lifted to such hope-filled heights

there is no green in me

no life, of promise of it

only an icy February stillness

Rev. Judith Mensch served as a pastor in the United Methodist Church.  She began writing poetry in the last years of her life, as a way of responding to and coping with breast cancer.  She passed away in 2003.