Why write poems, when so much has been said so well?
Because the world remains new and exciting.
What Frost and Berry and Dickinson saw and experienced
Is only partly mine.
I see the world my own way.
I live on the land. I walk on the soil (not dirt, my son, age three, corrects me).
My dog, so sweet, so needy, paws red clay into my leg, my clothes.
The soil stays in me. My clothes, my shoes, always red.
My hands run red in all sinks: airport, friends’, church. The soil sticks to me.
The soil is in me. I have cried for the animals, the crops, the trees,
That the soil cannot, will not support.
And yet it supports me.
When the animals don’t grow, the crops don’t grow—I grow.
The soil gives: proper perspective.
The death of a tomato plant, the death of a chicken: disappointing.
A life lived in anger, fear, hatred: horrifying.
A rooster’s call, after presumed dead: redeeming.
A scion joined to a rootstock: rejoicing.
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