I put this poem into visual form. See it on the new YouTube channel also.
Thinking about it, why I wrote it, it summons up lessons from my days as a kid, working endless hours and days on our poor farm, eking out whatever sustenance nature would give us. The lesson that the earth abideth forever, the lesson of Ecclesiastes, that we all will come and go but the earth, it holds our heart and soul. It heals too. I want to be as nurturing and soft as the earth, as feminine too.
Walmart Roses
I’m not much of a gardener.
In fact, not one at all.
But the other day
coming out of Walmart
I saw these wilting roses
on their last legs
dying in plastic bagged soil.
3 for a buck fifty.
Not like I’m trying
to save the world and all,
no green thumb and all
but the place could use
some prettying up.
I got home
and got a big fork
from the kitchen
and dug 3 holes
putting them gently in,
a little pat to finish each off.
Now, 3 days later
they’re tall, strong, fiery red.
It’s amazing how forgiving
the earth is.
“I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”
― Willa Cather, My Ántonia
The Earth Abideth Forever