Dirt

Vincent Hostak

December 31, 2023

Keep the dirt a little longer.

Your people knew the broom should wait.

So early in the year is not a time for toil.

All the tiny particles of luck cling to its molecules,

journeyed on cat’s paws and plumbers’ shoes to be here,

riding every tiny cyclone that passed your threshold.

You should be so lucky as to travel on a sigh,

to have met the Queen of the Prairie,

known the love of the grass you nourished, living unsettled,

content to briefly colonize the corners of a cottage.

If this is not enough, think of the riches in every clump:

fragments of silicon, calcium, iron and salt.

Your elders stayed the urge and hid the feathered cornhusks,

while the natal year began to blink and curl and rise. So can you.

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.