Dirt

I bend down

between green blades of rye to ponder the dirt

and the ants marching to and fro,

carrying sweet morsels down

down beneath the earth

like soldiers on a trail to the Western colonies.

This earth is my manifest destiny.

The earthworms lay claim to it all.

They are kings of the humus,

layers of silence slowly enmeshing the

exudate of roots,

bodies of the fallen,

fecal matter of swifter creatures aflight.

I feel down

beneath green blades of rye to ponder the dirt

and the universe spilt out before me.

A grand conflagration: protozoa and microbe, bacteria and mycorrhiza

battling to the ultimate, inevitable death.

A billion unspoken souls waging holy war

in a teaspoon of jet black soil?

I look up at the sky,

back down at the earth.

A hundred thousand times.

I remember only how small that world is,

that teaspoon of soil

slowly dissolving in the rain.

A small puddled remnant of precipitation

gathered in the heel of my bootprint.

And so it is with me.

A farmer amongst the deepening night sky,

and the gathering of stars.

Be the first to know.