Wanting for warmth, evening’s
wonderstruck and has folded in
upon itself and, in the darkness,
snow’s falling in deafening silence,
flake upon flake upon frenetic flake
laundering the air with a will
to soften the world’s hard edges
and bring abundance and beauty
back into this world, obliterating
bleakness, ghosting the landscape,
rounding out the wide wounds
that wish to hold it, while windless
hands, in hushed assembly, rebuild
stacks of firewood, raise snow-
capped roofs, level tilted porches
and add heft to doorsteps bordered
by evergreens bent low in prayer
and in the farther field a few
boulders remain exposed just
above the bluing drifts like heifers
foraging for thin winter grasses
when a stream of light from
somewhere beyond my line
of sight leaks through the darkness
slowly revealing the world’s
second, better self just returned
from the afterlife, stark and still
and miraculously luminous.
A resident of Connecticut and a lover of all things chocolate, John Muro has authored two volumes of poems — In the Lilac Hour and Pastoral Suite — in 2020 and 2022, respectively. His third book, A Bountiful Silence & Other Poems, will be published later this year. Since the publication of his first book, John has been thrice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, twice nominated for the Best of the Net and, in 2023, he was chosen as a Grantchester Award recipient. John’s work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Acumen, Connecticut River, Green Ink, Sky Island and the Valparaiso Review.
This poem previously appeared in Green Ink Poetry.