Good Soil

By Gloria Heffernan

We celebrate the first warm day of Spring
by preparing the backyard for planting,
hauling window-boxes and patio chairs,
unearthing all manner of garden tools.

Then in the garage, we find the blue pot
we stored under the shelves all winter long—
eight freezing months untended in the dark.
No water, no light, no expectations.

The clay pot is heavy as we heave it
out from under the spindly sawhorses
where it wintered over, weighted down
with good soil reused from year to year.

And there we stand, dumbfounded witnesses
to nature’s wild and exquisite madness,
gazing at ten relentless tulip stems
reaching up hungrily through the dry soil.

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Gloria Heffernan’s fourth book, Fused, was recently released by Shanti Arts Publishing. Her craft book, Exploring Poetry of Presence (Back Porch Productions) won the 2021 CNY Book Award for Nonfiction. She received the 2022 Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Prize. Gloria is the author of the collections Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica (Kelsay Books), and What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List, (New York Quarterly Books). Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including Poetry of Presence (vol. 2). To learn more, visit: www.gloriaheffernan.wordpress.com.