Compost
It took me almost three weeks
of shredding stalks of okra and ginger
into the compost
to really understand what lay before me,
pulsing damp warmth
onto the skin of my arms,
To look into the slowly-warping
scraps of vegetables, the crumbling eggshells,
the thin white spinnings of mycelium,
the dark, hidden mysteries of bacteria
I could not see but only feel,
and see: next summer’s plump tomatoes.
The bizarre, golden swoops of butternut squash
two winters from now.
The tangled clumps of weeds
scattered across the chicken yard.
The eggs spooned onto my plate with a smile.
I wish a funeral could be so poetic.
I wish the preacher might paint a portrait
not just of how we saw someone in their life,
but of the failing student he tutored to graduation
that won the Nobel Peace Prize,
the dog she rescued whose puppy
was given to the widower who lived next door,
that slept in the chair next to his bed
and died days after he did,
the trees in his yard
that shed pink blossoms in the street
and piled against the sidewalks like soft, feathery candy.
If we saw so much life in a death,
maybe we would not rush to seal off a body
to put it in the ground.
As if death were the contagious one.
As if the living things needed protection from it.