The Lingering Soil

By John T. Howard

                       Out beneath snow

beneath bluish ground frozen and hard

a mirror waits for you, in parchment,

buried

                        and bone and marrow,

and tooth and hair, they wait there, too,

they wait and they preach and you—you half

hear their words, little whispers, urging

murmurs

                        like the rustling heard

running through dark and ochered leaves,

how the branches after fall let out their doleful

empty-handed fingers into the chill

of a spineless

cold

                        that soughing, those

moans the lingering boles make when arguing

with the wind and that rasping complaint

waiting so long for the coming

thaw

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John T. Howard is a Colombian-American writer, translator, and educator. He is Assistant Director for the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and serves as Writer-in-Residence at Wellspring House Retreat in Massachusetts. He is at work on a first novel, a first collection of stories, and a first book of poems.