Here in the potato bed,
the soil is colder than the air
and damp as held breath.
I dig, and the ground remembers:
worm twisting,
a weathered button,
my daughter’s lost toy...
the past rising
in clumps of soil.
Roots outlast what’s left above.
Cut-back things keep reaching.
I turn the soil; winter presses in.
There’s work to finish
before the earth locks itself in frost.
Hope begins like this —
the hidden dark where a seed breaks open.
The first Isaiah knew
a shoot from the stump,
a green insistence
rising through ruin.
He spoke to people aching for deliverance;
I kneel in my garden,
hands burning in the chill,
listening for that promise
in this stubborn earth.
On the deck,
the tomato vines still tangle,
pale fruit
summoned by a warm spell
too close to frost.
They look like hope,
but the fading light says otherwise.
Still, beneath the surface,
the earth draws in,
gathering strength
for the next beginning.
I clear around the horseradish,
stern, unmoved,
its white fingers driving through clay.
A root like this
knows endurance.
What is planted deep
outlasts the winter.
I pull down tired growth,
lay leaves back into soil,
edges curling like paper.
I set hard tomatoes on the sill,
the last light
warming their shoulders.
In this thinnest season
I trust the slow work of God —
hope rooting itself quietly,
the first small promise
clinging to the cold.
For now, the garden lies still,
each low thing resting easy
beside the next.
