If You Decide to Dig in My Earth

If You Decide to Dig in My Earth

(“For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Romans 14:17)

If you decide to dig in my earth I
hope you find something
worth your time. I know where the bones are buried.

My daughter prayed that her hamster would live
one night on New Year’s Eve. I don’t remember the little
rodent’s name, but when we looked the next morning
he was dead. I never could explain why Power
and Love
could not keep him alive.

I don’t blame you for wondering how
certain flowers grow in the soil of my heart.
I see the all of it, you only see the part.
I have piled layer upon layer to hide what
I hoped would never be seen. I figured I would wait
until I was
80
to dig to the bottom again.

We buried the hamster in the back yard between
bulbs for tulips and daffodils. The ground, nearly frozen,
broke beneath our trowel. We laid him in his grave,
hoped the earth would welcome him. We bought her
another hamster weeks later. He escaped one day,
never to be found and maybe still haunts the house
running around the rafters 20 years hence.

If you want to know what is unseen in me,
I am ready for you to ask. If you want to hold me
hostage to my past,
I don’t mind. There is truth in all of it.

Spring warmed the bed where yellow and red
popped from the earth toward the warming sun.
And my daughter wanted to exhume the tiny body
planted a season ago. The same trowel that prepared
his final place
poked beneath his grave. Unearthed, the plastic
sandwich bag which was his coffin
contained only tiny bones, a skull as small as
popcorn. Her curious eyes and curious hands
silently greeted the remains.

It is no lie that my garden hides relics
I wish you did not know. But I will reveal them if,
after seeing their whiteness and death,
you stay for coffee and see me the same
as you have from the first.