Your opinion seemed right to you
and then
shit started. Soon,
it happened:

Nazi,
says the anonymous poster,
you’re a
Nazi
for suggesting such a thing.

By now, you’ve forgotten what you actually said.

Nazi,
you respond,
you’re the
Nazi
for bringing
Nazis
into this.  Trying to scare me
into shutting up by invoking
Nazis,
that’s a
Nazi
thing to do.

Nazi Nazi!
chimes in a
supporter of your enemy
(and what was this about again?)

Nazi! Nazi Nazi Nazi!
NAZI!

Damn, but it feels good
to bring them up in connection
with anything at all —
baseball card futures, Area 51,
that Palin woman, hairstyles,
the latest incarnation of garage rock.

Damn, it feels good
to hear that marching
in the world outside.
Almost like your blood
demands it from you.
Almost like it doesn’t matter
where you were headed
as long as you eventually
get to a point

where that word can roll off your outstretched fingers.

Dawn hasn’t warmed us
for months.  It might as well
have stayed dark all winter
for all the credit we gave the sun
for coming up, for if there’s no warmth
in sunlight, why have it?  That’s been
the prevailing opinion this year,
as it is every year.  Even as the days
have gotten longer,
we have continued to complain.

The hyacinths
know better, as always,
and have been employing
that incremental heat
for their own ends
for quite a while now,
trusting in
the inevitability of what was to come. 
Today, or yesterday, they broke through
beside the walk.

Their sudden arrival tells us
that it’s time for spring at last,
and all at once mornings feel downright
balmy.  We’re stupid this way,
forgetting every winter
that spring will come,
and that we’ll be surprised
when it happens.

Thank God
for the hyacinths giving us a heads up,
or we’d look even dumber
with our mouths hanging open
a few weeks from now
when, as always,
everything else pops.