Poetry Thursday

My first time as an "official" participant. I am a week behind on the prompts, last week was find something in the poetry section of bookstore or library that you hadn't read before. So I went to the library, and discovered that they have a surprisingly small amount of poetry! But I checked out a book of poetry called "Early GRRRL" by Marge Piercy. It is filled with her poems from the 1970's going back in time to her high school years. Very early/proto feminist but still very recognizable as her style which I very much appreciate.

I chose one poem out of that book for this week because it summed up how I've been feeling with finally finally finally getting my hands back into the soil of my garden while at the same time thinking about how much longer I have to be able to garden.

So without further ado,

Kneeling here, I feel good

Sand: crystalline children
of dead mountains.
Little quartz worlds
rubbed by the wind.

Compost: rich as memory,
sediment of our pleasures,
orange rinds and roses and beef bones,
coffee and cork and dead lettuce,
trimmings of hair and lawn.

I marry you, I marry you.
In your mingling under my grubby nails
I touch the seeds of what will be.
Revolution and germination
are mysteries of birth
without which
many
are born to starve.

I am kneeling and planting.
I am making fertile.
I am putting
some of myself
back in the soil.
Soon enough
sweet black mother of our food
you will have the rest.
- Marge Piercy, originally published in "Living in the Open"


















Trying my hand a quick riff on this idea after working in the garden for two solid hours (go me!)

Dirt/Hand

The hand
................in the dirt
The dirt
..............in the hand

For now the hand plants and harvests

Soon
.............too soon

the hand will return to the dirt from which it was formed

-Julie Z. Stiller