Poetry helps

I said that years ago during the height of a crisis in response to someone's desire to help.  "Find me a poem which helps articulate my inner experience", and some pressure is relieved, some oxygen added, a recognition of "yes".  This one does that for me.  It's what this waiting time has felt like.

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale 
by Dan Albergotti

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

I am hearing "the sound of gears and moving water"; things are moving.

Soil

When Gil and I bought this land 24 years ago, it was abused land.  The ridge top had been corned and Atrezined to death and erosion had finished the job. On the spine of the ridge there was mostly rocky gravel, very little top soil.   24 years of burning and mowing and just letting the switch grass roots and all the other life forms melt into organic matter which holds and builds  soil, has done it's job.
We did a prairie burn a week or so ago.  There had been a rain 3 days before but conditions had been very dry.   And yet, three days after the rain, there were tire tracks with standing water in them on the spine of the ridge.  There was enough organic matter to hold the moisture, to be resilient even if this is a drought year.

I feel like I've grown that resilience too.  Something is shifting in me, not sure what, but I am feeling the depth of my top soil, and it is holding moisture.   Tonight is a magic moment, there's green stubble showing through the blackened field out the ridge surrounded by apple family in full blossom.  I'm drunk on birds and blossoms.  I'm planting my garden and the coffee grounds and manure/hay of the last few years has deliciously decomposed; it's going to be a good garden this year I hope.  And it looks like the Gil tree is making it; there are new leaves opening.
Resilience and the power of soil, composting life into life.