Cold Soil
November 7, 2004
I’m listening to the latest returns on the radio. The country seems bent on re-electing Greed. To salvage the hour, I break up my garlic, slitting the skin around the neck with a paring knife, pressing my thumbs in beside the stem, prying out one clove at a time. As I drop each clove into the bowl, I mutter a string of prayers and curses—breaking up garlic as an irreverent rosary.
I have to plant this garlic before dark. The moon is not right, the weather is against me, but I need to put my hands in the dirt today. I need to sow something. I'd be smarter to wait a few days until the rain lets up, but I can't wait. Some things can only be sown into coldness.
I pry open another head, and another, praying to the Earth to transform my anger into compassion. Or at least into garlic.
Charles Goodrich lives near the confluence of the Marys and Willamette Rivers in Corvallis, Oregon. Read more.
"Cold Soil" was first published in Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden, (Silverfish Review Press, 2010).