i love dirt, pt 1 & 2

Decomposition

Gritty against my teeth /
I feel the earth.
It shifts beneath my palms,
Leaving the imprint
Of each blade of grass.

A prickly stem scratches my arm,
Hot and alive,
Like some strange insect.
It struggles against my fingers;
It bends toward the sun.

Blade of grass – she
Grew up out of this crumbly earth,
Like me, a slender weed
Eager to grow tall and pleasing,
Swift and straight and sweet.

I brush aside the leaves
And reach through to find
A chicken bone, whiter than a pebble:
Once discarded from the table
It still bears the marks of my teeth.

How carefree we suppose it was
“It must be so easy
To be only a child”
Yet everything was so heavy and new --
Reality so rarely glimpsed.

I can show you a picture, now:
Here is my little farm (Quaint and Peaceful),
Where Dad grew broccoli and cabbages
All with the taste of rocks
Clinging to my molars.

I knew everything then
All so difficult to explain.
But I held the proof in my bloodstream
That decomposition creates life
And growing, still I decompose.

I was an only child /
Playing in the dirt.
Now it is so easy to tell you
How simple and serene
It must have been – it must have seemed.



DIRT pt. 1

This is the dirt I gathered
The dirt I bought at Agway
And sprinkled across my floor
Filling flower pots
And hoping the seeds would grow.

This is the dirt on my palms
Dirt that doesn’t even smell
It’s missing that froggy scent,
As green as the grass
Hiding in roadside ditches.

This dirt is so synthetic
A uniform brown—not umber, not sienna
A dry, dead crumble, it is easily scattered
Dispersed by the wind
Our approximation of the earth:
Only acceptable when packaged.



Eating Dirt

Rocks are everywhere
That’s why they call it the endless mountains
Dad says.

We’re under the sun
Grasping the crabgrass that weaves
Along the rows of green beans.

The mailman’s tires kick up dust
His passage rumbles across the rock shelf
It’s 3pm.

We move to the tomato plants
Their soft-skins warm from the sun
Prickly stems graze my arms.

Among the pebbles I find buttons, bones, .22 shells
These make good whistles
When held to chapped lips.

Under my fingernails brown ribbons
Burrow their way into my bloodstream
Endless mountains’ dirt