this song is so touching to me. i always think of february as the nagging inside of a person to give up on a relationship. i can see everything in this song with a deeper meaning. it's so personal and yet so universal.

this is a beautiful song, no question about it. dar williams is a beautiful poet with a beautiful voice. beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

this song is about the end of a relationship. the whole thing about the wood chopping in the last verse is about how they made plans too far ahead of time, had too much faith in the relationship. february is the coldness that seeps into a relationship, after the magic of the holidays has worn off.

absolutely gorgeous.

wonderful song. gives me a chill everytime I hear it.

The line, "We gave presents without cards" is awesome. You know your relationship is in trouble when you begin to give material things and leave out the words that mean so much more than the gift itself.

Do you think it is about the end of a relationship? or when she writes that the leaves are turning does she mean that the relationship has taken a new turn, maybe they both realized when he said he still loved her that it was worth fight for, worth working through? So they go home, and the chop wood, and prepare for the next "february". I think she means that they go and make good memories, and strenghten their relationship, so that next time they have a rough patch, they have the "fire wood" or whatever to make it through the cold.

this is one of the most beautifully written songs i have ever listned to. it shows how a once good relationship slowly deteriorates throughout the year. how they begin fall out of love. they forget the things they used to do for fun with eachother. the relationship begins to become seemingly pointless. we see this as she sings the line, "And then the snow, and then the snow came, we were always out shoveling
And we'd drop to sleep exhausted, and we'd wake up and it's snowing" they spent the day shoveling, went to bed, woke up and they needed to shovel all over again. its just to poignant!

The first four verses are about the end of a relationship, and the last is about the beginning of a new one.

Sollisch, the line you chose is one of the most brilliantly written lyrics I have ever heard. Ir reflects the struggle to keep a relationship going only to find out that all the progress can be easily undone, as easily as the new snow can cover the ground you just cleared.

Dar is just amazing.

This song breaks my heart.

I'm going through a slow breakup now.

When she sings: You said, "I still love you" it hurts so much.

Let me preface this by saying it's possible that I'm being too literal here, but... After listening to this song in my subconscious many times, I finally started paying attention to the words. It immediately struck me as being not about just any failing relationship, but a specific kind.

Basically, no one seems to mention the recurring theme of forgetting things. To me, this not just important, it's crucial.

I see this as the description of an elderly couple living out their days and dealing with Alzheimers. "Oh, that's too easy", you say? Follow me:

The keys were thrown into the water why? Could be because of a fight between the couple, probably is, but maybe the reason for the fight is that one person wants to drive, and the other knows that he or she stands a good chance of getting lost etc.

We then have two passages about flowers, broken up by a passage about Christmas (which of course, preceeds february). Note the blaming of one by the other for forgetting... Then, we're told that December, two months prior was a warning. presents w/out cards, etc. To me, the shoveling, and waking up and shoveling again represents the tribulations of dealing with the small things in a day while one is losing one's faculties. Sleep only brings the next day, which forces one to deal w/ the nuisances of daily life anew (i.e. last night's snowfall).

By march, one person's mind is so far gone that even the concept of a flower is gone, prompting the other, who now is caring for someone who is almost more primitive than a child to say: "I still love you".

Finally, we're brought to the fall "the leaves were turning...", and a "new lover" who is likely just the constantly forgotten old lover is making keys to the house (i.e. replacing the keys that were thrown into the pond). Chopping wood, in my opinion, is the analogue to shoveling snow in the winter, but since we're now in the fall, it's chopping wood instead.

Why February? I think the motif of the year may be real, or it may (perhaps more likely) be the metaphorical passing of a few years, onto which the length of the battle w/ the loss of memory has been mapped.

Regardless, it seems to me that February comes at a turning point... maybe when the first of the really big blowups occurs, and results in the key incident. The line "I have lost to February" suggests that it was in this part of the story that the author realized he or she had a problem, and that by the autumn of the next year, the fate was sealed.

I may be wrong, but it all seems to fit... *and* if so, it's a far more depressing and intreguing song than just another song about a breakup.

i don't think the "new" relationship is with a new person. i think it is a metaphore for coming out of a rough patch in a relationship. i think she throws the keys into the water, and her "new lover" makes keys to replace those lost in the fight.

the walk shows how muchshe had forgot of the landscape of their relationship before the harsh winter.

when the leaves turn they start chopping wood in order to survive the next rough season in their relationship.