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.

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