“The
morning will begin with an educational orientation.”
Says
the farmer,
As
she tries to convey the difference
Between
topsoil and compost.
Attempting
to answer their bewildered questions.
Becoming
visibly surprised when someone asks :
“Is
dog poop compostable or should I throw it in the trash?”...
Congregations
of people are surrounding their mounds.
Pushing
clods through their sifting screens.
Pulling
out accidental forks, bits of plastic,
Undigested
mystery clumps.
”It's
like kneading dough”...
Says
another in childlike delight.
Then
the man who asked about dog poop surprises again :
”I
get it!" He shouts. "Everything is dissolving and
coming apart...becoming a part of...becoming the whole!”
His
hands absorbing knowledge from the sweet smelling mix.
The
farmer is stunned.
Then
it seizes her :
The
Sermon On The Pile
+++“Friends
... What you see here is NOT topsoil! Impossible! /// Hear me
Dear Ones! /// When those precious top inches of centuries old
fecundity are removed / that complexity has truly evaporated ///
Sisters and Brothers! / Nothing can replace it /
Hear
me now!/// In the nameless name of the source / Of that which we
erode and that which we preserve / We do not make the topsoil! / All
we can do is feed / protect it //
This!
// Our truest Wealth!
So
I say unto you
Give
yourselves to the ordinary compost pile / Tend it well / This sacred
culture /// Feel the revelation // YES! / The biotruth
// Not available in digital form /// Eternally more complex than
your latest computing device /// OH !! /// Forgive us the
arrogance that would posit the World Wide Web as superior alternative
to the breathing Web of Wisdom encoded in this heaving pile ///
YEAH!// This living compost /// Spread it open handed on the
ailing soil /// Lay your salt belly down on it's medicine! /// Commit
it's scent to memory /// Sanctify it /// This Holy tributary /
This taste of that most fundamental Darkness /// Precursor to
all Light /// The absence that speaks of an all encompassing embrace
// Of
verity // Of consolation /// Hallelujah !" +++
Could be a sermon from the Mad Farmer's Liberation Front (Wendell Berry) - speak it sister!
ReplyDeleteHave you seen Montgomery's Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, or Dirt! the book and movie. Also some permaculture practices might bring this distinction of compost and topsoil into blurry unification: a recent In Good Tilth article by Rick Valley showed a technique of continuing to build out beds by adding active compost layers to the end of the bed, letting it cook down and then having the bed already be there in situ ready for planting. Imagine the growing compost-as-mesoderm garden beds snaking their way over time across the landscape, how cool is that?
beautiful...
ReplyDeleteyes, i have the book you speak of...
didn't know there was a film!
"Good Tilth" looks like a great journal!!
Thanks for referring it! :)
Scooter, i just read the Mad farmer's Liberation Front by W.B.
ReplyDeleteDeep down thanks for telling me about it!! i had no idea it existed..
I had some very full exhales while reading it.:)
Rachel, highly encourage you to get the entire volume of Berry's Mad Farmer Poems, now done in a beautiful volume all together with woodblocks... Great epic-earth inspirations for sure!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the sermon, Rachel. I feel the possession of earth, compost, holy unbuilding/rebuilding texture, smell, being.
ReplyDelete"Lay your salt belly down on its medicine!"