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| Photo by Matt Seymour on Unsplash |
A few days ago, a friend gave me the title during a conversation about something else and my experience in the garden gave me the image for this prose-y poem.
“It is hard to live as a human without breaking things.”
– a friend
Just this week, water leaked from the ceilings of the New York subway, drenching trains. Basements flooded: Philly. Entire forests of fires spewed smoke into the clear Canadian sky, which, following the twisting jet stream a thousand miles, found my lungs in a garden on a ridge overlooking a small creek in Iowa. I turned the late summer soil with a wooden-handled shovel that, on one plunge into the dark earth, struck a milk snake – oh, the patterns, such cherry! such umber! – lying hidden underground, cleaving its right side nearly through. It writhed and twisted. I scooped up the snake and placed it in the tall grass. I returned to my work. Its twisting pain played in a loop in my head. Hours passed. And the hot work faded the color. Why is a poem? It is a tenderizer, a finger dragged across the edge of a sharpened shovel. A drop of blood oozing from the cut.
– steve peterson
Oh, Steve. That title. This poem. You, of all people, who care so deeply and carefully for this earth. Why did it have to be your shovel? In the same way the snake's "twisting pain played in a loop in my head" your poem is playing a loop in mine...as tears track down my cheeks...
ReplyDeleteThank you for visiting and commenting, Mary Lee. We are sometimes told to "leave our mark on the world." Some days I'm pretty acutely aware of how tough it is to move through the world WITHOUT leaving a mark.
ReplyDeleteGood lord, Steve. "such cherry! such umber!" in the middle of the painful hot work of digging, bleeding. It is a tenderizer.
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