Soil Preserves

Soil Preserves

(“The seed sown is natural; the seed grown is supernatural…” 1 Corinthians 15:44a [The Message])

Soil preserves everything old in a blanket,
cools everything inches below the reach of sunlight,
provides everything to nourish early and new arrivals,
warms everything miles and miles above the core of the earth.

Children dig corners in their yards and sometimes
find
black buttons,
plastic wrap,
spoons and bones left by pet dogs and previous owners.

Potsherds preserved centuries below the floors of
yesterday’s living rooms in tells,
mounds of generation follow generation
never knowing what had come before.

Someday I will castaway my body to the graveyard,
a site slightly mounded with slab marking the spot.
It will become an architect’s hollow room
after I sign another
long-term lease for a studio overlooking
a river bounded by medicine-trees.

Soil may preserve my bones, digits and stones;
and cool my slacking skin. But heaven is more suited
for my soul’s final movement, at home at last,
no sorrow no sin, all is completed,
death is defeated,
life flows boundless and green
through the dreams planted before
the beginning of time.