When the Winter Ghosts Depart

They leave slowly, as if reluctant to go

or unsure when the time is right, like travelers

who can’t decide which books to pack, the long

        Russian novel they’ve been struggling to finish

or the new one about cerebral werewolves, its firm hard binding

bright on the shelf promising a new kind
of death.

Where ice has leeched deep down into soil, they move

slowly, wading through dirt and loosened stones

        but where the symphony of roots has bound them

in a coil of growth they hesitate, caught
up in the coming storm of leaf and branch and flower.

Sometimes they slip away

in pairs, lovers

        from an old film, long, gray coats and a fedora

slanting out into sullen wind.

I have heard them whispering in a taxi or jogging

        to catch a plane, weaving

through moving walkways, spilling

        coffee from Styrofoam cups, committed

to the journey
now, willing to open the welcoming gate.

        And I have known them to dig down into fence posts

grip the wood in their devils’ teeth
pour their sinuous, frozen bodies into clinging pools of wet cement.

Sometimes vague taste of spring catches in their throats, a warm

fist, a warning in the dire air, a syncopation

        of ice

turning to rain, pelting the windows with slippery

        lozenges, loosening a hard grip on muted and tentative grass.

by Steve Klepetar