Brave Blooms Poem by Barry Middleton

Precocious blooms
ignore the cold
and boldly
in the spring unfold
while just this day
I lit the fire
to warm salvation
and desire.
My northern days
have taught me sure
that scarlet blooms
provide no cure
for emptiness
and excess pain
and piercing days
of bleak spring rain.
They are a gesture
for the sight,
they know not when
the time is right
but bloom the same
on the happenstance
that spring will stay;
they take a chance.