Amendment
Should’ve started sooner. I know that; I’ve been reading
Wendell Berry & Rachel Carson since I was a kid. But
I’ve begun. My father died a few months ago & now
there's a January thaw after a deep freeze. All I managed
in the fall was to pile up leaves & accumulate twigs
& with a Goodwill find, started collecting food scraps,
something I should’ve always done: how many coffee
grinds, eggshells, those bananas gone ripe but wasted?
Out there in my boots in a thick fog as the snow goes
back into the air—warmth changing matter’s form—I
begin to layer the piles of wet leaves with cardboard
strips culled from all those Amazon boxes (remove
the tape!), & I think of our father, only for a moment.
It is good to move my body in the midwinter air, feel
my heart loosen, to hold a pitchfork in my hands,
knowing air & decay will bring on the heat in time
turning this into compost from which I will grow
potatoes. I’ll bury them in trenches, piling soil
higher as the plants emerge to encourage more
tubers, which I’ll know are ready only when
the flowers are done & the foliage has died.
LAURA McCULLOUGH ’s most recent book is Women & Other Hostages (Black Lawrence Press). Read more.