The Western Illinois Folio / John Mann
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John Mann has published poems and has been active in his position as poetry editor of the Mississippi Valley Review. Mann is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at Western Illinois University.


FEBRUARY RAIN


So out of season, February rain,
bright needles sew the darkened sky
to lick the cold stone. Lie
sweet across the land's old pain.

Then comes wind: the barn turns
to the change, each lean and creak and heel
a ship to cleave your frozen sight. Feel
its heft and swell: the heart yearns

toward gust and spray, a golden jump of mind
across the ruin of furrow, stubble, shuck and hay,
the trees' black watch, the gardens of broken clay.
Reckoning spring, we leave the cold behind.

-John Mann