The gardener’s hands roam the soil, then traverse the plants, the stalks—those steady hands snipping, plucking, gathering the mustard, the loose-leaf, the collards, the Porter’s and Plainsman, long beans on a fence wire.
And who hears the world’s turning or notices the sounds when the sun falls through the hickory and sweetgum into the evening. Who hears the riot underground, as roots take hold and put out their feelers,
as taproots form and drive deeply, deeper into a matrix of lush humus, the way fracking drills drive down into the nearby forest, the diamond bits pushing into the land, the casings laid in place, the drill mouths open wide.
It’s hard not to hear their industry or feel the humming, the juddering, over miles and distances that reach into our sleep as the water and sand and chemicals are forced down into the wells like a living agency, steel roots grubbing
and grabbing. And what will we reap from all that commerce, so much greater than the small deaths hardly anyone notices—of each oak leaf, each pine needle, the marrows and skins of tomatoes, squash, potatoes, apples.
Does anyone notice the decaying compost, its breakdown of peels and husks and leaves, their crackling energy. In another season, this will sift into a rich velvet for bedding the seeds and supporting the stalks and the buds
while down the road, bulldozers still snarl, making clear-cuts into the woods, felling not just the trees but the nests, the hives, the grapevines, wild gold tomatoes, tangles of blackberries, and slender onion tops. They cover the burrows,
ant-beds, and fox dens—the dozers making inroads, to bring in more heavy equipment, to level the ground, to break apart the rocks, to skin the earth, leaving the soil naked so that it migrates down to the creeks.
And all the while, the bees and wasps continue their circling above the compost bin and basil flowers, like a wave of bells, reckoning. The homesteader keeps tending and reaping, listens to the energy fueling the insects’ circular flights, their spiraling
and arcs as they dip into the larger kitchen garden, the smaller herb garden, the orange and yellow blooms that ask for the bees, the wasps, for heat and rain, the way we ask for light poles and water pumps and ovens that heat evenly.
There is the bees’ wild retreat to their secret hive—when they are startled by the dogs barking and leaping or the sudden thunder of the machines. There is always the grower who taps the rain-barrels and knows the water rushing to the bottom,
burbling from the hose as if it’s been constricted too long and can finally force its breath and let her water the beds. Then the gardener will pluck the fat worms from the Swiss chard, just as the vigilant others—
the engineer at the well, the backhoe driver, the signaler, the truck driver wide awake from the morning coffee, make their heavy, accurate movements like laborious breathing, a great drawing in, a great sighing.
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Rebecca A. Spears, author of Brook the Divide (Unsolicited Press) and The Bright Obvious (Finishing Line Press), has her poems, essays, and reviews included in TriQuarterly, Calyx, Crazyhorse, Barrow Street, Verse Daily, Ars Medica, Field Notes, and other journals and anthologies. She has received awards from the Taos Writers Workshop, Vermont Studio Center, Porches Writing Retreat, and Dairy Hollow House. Brook the Divide was shortlisted for Best First Book of Poetry (Texas Institute of Letters).
