Connoisseur Of Dirt
Who cares about the banana slug? Suddenly
there on the path inches from your feet
like a refugee from a painting by Bosch.
Can’t you picture its image on a bone china teacup?
This dawdling thumb of slime—so viscous
it could cruise a knife edge without a nick. Oozes
through the day, unapologetic, as if haste
were a sure sign of the uncivilized.
Imagine spending every hour contemplating
the earth millimeter by millimeter. To track
the footprints of beetles, wakes of worms.
Probing like a lover’s topography tiny arcs
of forest floor, the density of dirt, forsaken pebbles.
Would you hear a heartbeat? Some ancient,
implacable ka-thwunk, ka-thwunk that rumbles,
like the lazy lope of a brontosaurus, up through
magma and igneous rock? And would it change
in the rain?
Married for life to a place enduring as faith,
a cool, dark realm that hums with roots unfurling
and seeds that dream their tomorrow then do
their dance, could you forget how the earth holds
you, gives and receives without judgment? Spirit,
manifest in a mud puddle and in this slithering
alchemist who turns fox dung, rotted leaves, poison
oak into the shimmer and glisten of blood, breath,
and light.
©Lucy Aron, Birmingham Poetry Review, Winter/Spring 2005
