it is time to plant
trees, if you have the heart for it:
bare-rooted plugs
dug up, their native soil still clinging to them,
or grown from seed or grafted, in potting mix,
seedlings, saplings, balled and burlapped,
but anyway dormant
and ready for planting, in cold soil,
to give them time—
and to give them space, the hole
must be twice the size of the root mass.
And not any soil, anywhere,
but crumbly damp till, and if all you have
is heavy clods of piedmont clay streaked with sand
dig it, use a shovel, planting blade, or hoedad blade,
stone pick, whatever, fork it and double fork,
break up and disperse and mix it up,
add compost and water.
This is called amending.
You want a dreamsoil, seedbed of nostalgia,
so the winter rain will wash it down
and fill the little air pockets
round the tender roots and hair roots,
settle the disturbed
soil around them,
and even so they may fail,
may already be dead.
The earth is tilted,
wobbling
into solstice, our part of the planet
leaning into the long nights and the intermittent familiar
waves of cold, frost, rain.
Chill and damp the old leaves.
Time too for raking, time to haul
twigs and leaves down into the woods
and give them back,
as root cover, shelter
for the smallest of earth’s creatures,
those that nibble and gnaw and kill:
the myriad bacteria, fungi,
that make for scab and canker and rust and blight,
all equally thriving in this world.
And though the deer may nibble off the leaves
and rub branch and trunk bare
and the moths and caterpillars feed
and the spring rain fail,
it is the time for planting.
Though the planet is tilted
to disaster for us humans, currents
veering or fading, wind, flood, fire,
the days of judgment upon us, the year
and our years here ending,
it is time for planting
—
Maura High lives in the piedmont of North Carolina. Most of her poetry is an exploration of this landscape and its complex past and present, the relation of land and water with the humans and other-than-humans that live here. Much of her understanding of this landscape comes from years of fieldwork with The Nature Conservancy. A native of Wales, Maura brings to her work the musicality and traditions of that country. Her work has been recognized with awards and publication. For details, see maurahigh.com.
