Handful

July 3 2019

Here they go again

calling it dirt instead of soil.

Are we this disconnected from earth

we recoil from its living surface?

Seeing only the mess

the dog tracks in,

the gumbo mud

churned up by rain,

the choking dust

of summer drought

suspended in a heavy yellow pall.

The complex web

of fungi and bugs

roots and slugs

and blind slithering creatures

that give life to the soil

we plow, spray, suck dry.

A handful

of the rich moist stuff

squeezed between my fingers

held up to my nose.

It is black, and lightly packed

and smells of fresh manure

cut grass

humus and loam,

compost left to ripen

into fertile earthy soil.

Determined shoots are breaking through

unfurling toward the sun,

succulent green

with tiny drops of water

clinging to their leaves.

Like a painless birth

from mother earth

creating matter from light.

A friend of mine, with whom I share an interest in science, forwarded an article from the Washington Post about the completion of the “connectome” of C. Elegans: the completion of the entire wiring map of this highly studied worm's neural anatomy. An interesting article, no doubt, and a finding that will not only help elucidate the neurological function of higher animals – including us – but also serves as a sobering reminder of just how dauntingly complicated the same mapping exercise will be in the human brain and body.

But, of course, in my typical pedantic way, my attention was arrested by this sentence:

The worm in question is Caenorhabditis elegans. Thin and translucent as a glass noodle, the microscopic animal lives in dirt and eats bacteria.

No one who has anything to do with agriculture or horticulture or even an illicit grow-op would call it “dirt” and not “soil.” I've frequently encountered this error, and the opportunity for a poem immediately struck me. This is the result.