Inspiration / Tien Skye & Lucy The Eggcademic (she/her)

The First Azalea Bloom

A poem about warm winters

Floridians slide through winter like a butter knife through warm biscuits. Winter isn’t a season here, it’s a cluster of moments, mostly in January.

Warm apple cider and hot rum toddies are luxuries — appreciated and discarded when the first azalea blooms in February.

My passion for winter died long ago in Maine, a state that glorifies all that made me cold and miserable for three years.

Is this a poem or a series of cold thoughts in a warm state?

We get cold here— believe me — frost, even flurries — well, almost never flurries, but they’ve happened.

We have wicked cold winds, unwelcome visitors from the north, like the snowbirds that crowd the interstates.

We wear sweaters and parkas, scarves, gloves, and hats — once, twice, maybe, six times before pulling out swimsuits.

Pots of spicy chili and cinnamony pumpkin pies remind you of the north until we pour a margarita to go with them.

Winter is confused here. Never knowing if it's coming or going. We are confused in winter. Days in the 80s become nights in 30s or 20s.

Our air-conditioner remains on stand-by, used more than the heater. Beds clothed only in sheets for most months now don colorfully-confused comforters.

Some anxiously await the cooler-ness of winter, these are always the real Floridians, the born-and-breds, worn down by heat and humidity like tires bald from the highway.

But, we transplants, the ones who chose to be here, often for the same reasons the natives wish they weren’t, we are wistful when summer fades at the end of fall — too soon for us.

We become glum and despondent, feeling like Florida abandoned us or we were transported back to a bleak, colorless place we left so long ago.

Yes, depression sets in for those weeks — two, maybe, three — before the first azalea blooms.

© Dennett 2020

This poem is in answer to two prompts. The first was from Tien Skye in Weeds & Wildflowers:

The second was from Lucy The Eggcademic (she/her)in The Brain is a Noodle:

Thank you both for encouraging me to abandon my housework to write this poem!

I invite everyone reading this to respond to the winter prompts by Tien and Lucy.