Most people call it dirt, assuming the material itself to be dirty, lowly, lacking in integrity. Yet soil is the lifeblood of all living things on this planet, and there is nothing dirty about it. Since the dawn of time, soil has sprung forth with new life, chartreuse fern tendrils curling slowly from the ebony crumbles of loamy earth. Standing in this alleyway, the thaw today has left a sponginess to my step. Scraping away the decaying detritus reveals the composting soil, deep black and rich like oil on a texas summer day.
Recycling that which is waste and regrowing that which is wild and free. Life and compost, are they one and the same? Are we only free at the very moment we break the ties that bind us to this gravitational pull? Am I human enough to forget how much we need this dust…to dust, to dust.
Time is as essential to the soil as is waste, biodegrading over eons of seconds, the minutes faded into arbitrary anthropomorphic designations. May I sit upon the puddle's edge, small and shrunken like the heads, watching time pass by and dismantle the once living bodies into chemical particles of life giving fertilizer. Twigs in my garden shuffle into sawdust, wet and fragmented, the pieces already forming new living organisms. Soft delicate fingers of old man haired mold, beautiful in its capable hands, taking death and composting it into new pieces of the future.
Deep breaths of the frigid air, cold as January ice, crystals forming on my exhale as I sigh impatiently. Spring hides behind the aperture of winter’s shadow. Months of deep freeze turn to years to decades to infinity and suddenly the sun breaks the clouds and time halts once more. Deep breaths again, this time the richness of the earth fills my nostrils, pushing the memories of warmth out and replacing them with memories of being composted. Reincarnation occurs every second of every day, as we are all just particles of soil. Granules held in the palm of nature’s hand, fingers closing on your throat in a welcome embrace, remembering the days when our bones were dirt.
