Yes, hope is cruel, as is expectation.
Desire, sadder than sensation.
We see the road ahead and naturally
imagine the journey, not the tripping and falling,
the getting lost and having to backtrack, revert,
reorient, find new inducement, start out again.
Though we are still as we were, still awaiting renewal,
warmth does return to the world, blossoms do bloom.

But possibility is Spring's thing (however constrained,
however tenuous)!  A taxing adolescence yet exceeds
fixed and fated doom.  Though Spring may feel false
at times, nonetheless it weaves the summer pattern
that then, brutally, begins to unravel:
no, no, crueler than April is December.