Soil

by Janan Young

This is sand, where I went from dark to light,

where the turtle and toad dig,

sad green skin that sags,

tongues of salt, the eyes

touched with fossil and foam.

Aleatoric sounds float

where the kelp swims freely.

The heat absorbs like water

and the silt is like a powder

choking and dismal.

Some ice plant grows here

brighter than a dream.

This is clay, unfired and healthy

fermenting in the humus.

Grasshopper parts and dead beetles

are ingredients by the stream.

My adulthood is a pastlife debt,

no score keepers, not a plan.

I will take the soil to fill the holes.

God's tangled hair is the roots

that my shovel cannot cut.

Previously published on Rick Lupert's Poetry Superhighway