Poem: "Dirt farmer"

[violetcheetah]

I guess this is a companion to my short story "After the Sun." It came into my mind yesterday while listening to Hem's "Half Acre" for the umpteenth time.

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Dirt farmer

I sweep the floors every morning.
I do not take the braided rugs outside to shake;
I snap them like whiplashes in the hall,
and I gather what falls to the floor.
Each week I beat the window screens
against the same floorboards; it leaves marks,
but the flecks of wood add to the bounty.
Every fortnight — more often if it's windy —
I take the dust and dander and grit
to the pit the dead tree roots left.
I layer my treasure with holey shirts —
the earthworms prefer flannel — and I water it
with the soapless washwater
from my laundry and dishes and bath.
Yes, I know what the neighbors think,
but the snow melts and steams away
from the growing mound in February,
and in March I am ready to harvest.
I fill the narrow boxes I've made
between each inner window and storm,
and I hold back some washwater now
when I saturate the pit's new layers.
I plant six of each bean, the peas, the lentils;
four yellow squash, four green.

I thought I truly believed;
why else thresh the screens and carpets,
sponge my skin with a meager bowl of water?
I did not know I'd had no faith
until a bedtime lamplight check showed
that first fault-lined distension in the surface
and beneath the cracks, like verdant lava,
the tender life ready to erupt.
My shriek sounded not like joy,
but like someone burning, or grieving,
bringing the nightshirted neighbors across their barren field and mine
and into my spotless house and still I screamed until they saw
that nubbin.
It was not until I saw them see that I believed.
In silence we gazed at the soil —
this was soil —
and laughed tears and held each other
before shyly pulling away and taking leave.

I put out the lamp and lay on the sofa,
wanting the sun to wake me through that same window
where it would draw its first new being in years
up from earth and into light and life.