While Waiting for a Blizzard

I have salt, sand, an extra shovel,
a gallon of milk, both cars gassed up.
You get the picture. I?m a safety pin,
belt, and suspenders type. School is
cancelled, so are planes. Marooned,
a time out, some make love, take walks,
but not me. Sleet changes to rain
and I can?t enjoy rivers overflowing
from gutters filled with leaves. Snow
does not fall. Instead, robins come,
hundreds of them eating berries
from my holly tree. No weathermen,
their red breasts forecast: spring. So,
why don?t I double stock picnic baskets,
buy extra shears to cut tulips, daffodils?

* Vivian Shipley is editor of Connecticut Review and the Connecticut State University Distinguished Professor. In 2001, she won the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Prize, and the Daniel Varoujan Prize from the New England Poetry Club. In 2000, she won the Marble Faun Award for Poetry from the William Faulkner Society and numerous other prizes.