What calls louder than the cry of a field of corn ready, or trees of ripe peaches?
The small ears prick on the bushes, furry buds, shoots tender and pale. The swamp maples blow scarlet. Color teases the corner of the eye, delicate gold, chartreuse, crimson, mauve speckled, just dashed on. The soil stretches naked. All winter hidden under the down comforter of snow, delicious now, rich in the hand as chocolate cake: the fragrant busy soil the worm passes through her gut and the beetle swims in like a lake. As I kneel to put the seeds in careful as stitching, I am in love. You are the bed we all sleep on. You are the food we eat, the food we ate, the food we will become. We are walking trees rooted in you. You can live thousands of years undressing in the spring your black body, your red body, your brown body penetrated by the rain. Here is the goddess unveiled, the earth opening her strong thighs. Yet you grow exhausted with bearing too much, too soon, too often, just as a woman wears through like an old rug. We have contempt for what we spring from. Din, we say, you’
