Outdoors, optimistic for early spring

Taking a minute, breathing in the soft light of 3 o'clock.
I sat outside, pretending that March was May
reading a book of poems by a poet from my home state,
someone who has seen what I have seen
grown where I have grown
felt, been, swam, shouted, leaped where I have leaped.
I am cold, but it is a surface cold.
My body's spring has a swelling warmth that I feel even in the ends of my limbs,
the tips of quivering branches waiting, waiting for the split and push
of the buds of young, ready green-growth.