SOMETHING COME FROM NOTHING IN LEFTOVERS

 

SOMETHING COME FROM THE NOTHING

IN LEFTOVERS, DAY-MAKING IN THE TEMPLE

WHERE I’M COMING FROM WORLD COMPOSING

for Klyd Watkins

Waking before the mean time

timeless in the dreaming a kind of timing

and practice, and before the quiet requests

of the toes for movement, the compost

works its warmer ways into those other

extremities of wonder. Yesterday’s cut

peonies, turned once, have had nearly 24 hours

to settle in to dark spaces of revolving

black plastic. These first images of waking

arrive before altered shadow dark ones,

all part of the great messy mix. My friend

laughs his love for me in a poem commenting

on my age, time to turn to other thoughts,

and the 6-inch sliding doors, such

narrow access for the comings and goings

of the world composing itself such

deep down things. These and other

soil-making thoughts disturbing

this morning. Such tiny movement,

you’d think I might be a Feldenkreis

instructor, saying, Go slower. Two

new books (and old books) arrived

and sent. The new from Tennessee,

from Klyd—Feathers, and his own poems,

What Charlie Pride and Ray Acuff Talked About

Before Singing. Klyd is all sound country.

Hear that? Sound country. When he asked

me for feather poems I didn’t have any.

Now I wish I did, what I wrote him. Last week,

maybe longer, turning compost

(in the North Park of the garden)

where the temple is, I remembered

Snyder and his buddies talking about

the horrible garb doctors wear.

What should they wear? One asked

Snyder, they’d been talking about

Mountains and Rivers Forever.

Feathers, he said. Feathers,

they all repeated laughing. Then,

walking with Karen after Feathers

came in the mail, one feather

stops me on the sidewalk, this

bright orange shaft. But beautiful.

Some call this the rachis, this orange stem.

Look, I say to Karen.

This pure orange. And here’s two more,

she says picking them up. I photographed

them in her hands with my Iphone.

Those doctors. Doctors in feathers.

That’s a poem right there. Feathers

go into composts too. Not these.

These feathers go in the mail to Klyd.

Maybe they’ll be book marks, or cairns.

He might use the quills for writing.

Feathers in compost are 90% protein,

15% nitrogen, classified as green.

The science of protein in the form

of keratin, a fiber, is heavy reading.

The feathers in my hand don’t come

from poultry, however. I worry

they might have come from the kill

of the neighborhood cat lurking from

beneath some tree. Banana peels,

cardboard, coffee grounds, carrots.

All of it with falling leaves coming

in this mid-October week and last grasses.

Too much green soon turns to too much

brown, all of it delighting my politics,

my stand. I will make soil. I will get dirty.

This morning there are 26 days before the election.

Baseball playoffs before the World Series,

another source of medicine. What Klyd says

regarding that talk between Acuff and Pride

before the song? They were talking

about baseball. I don’t even know

if they voted. We do know they

were surrounded by bad politics,

and that baseball is a vaccine.

The thing about composting is the listening.

When you’re in there, when you open those bins,

you know everything is included. Everything.

The whole mix. Word comes like that.

Putting something together is dictionary.

Putting something together, like song,

or poem or prayer. Everything you can’t

see goes in. Especially things you can’t see.

Things you don’t even know about go in.

You can’t see it, but you can hear it.

You kind of can. Everything becomes

available for something else you don’t

know about. Right here. Here

might be the place to end this

whatever it is, and grab a shovel.

But it’s not the end either, it’s like

last Saturday, I went to Fruit City

in Union Gap and loaded up.

I bought the smallest of the large cabbages.

It was morning. It was another beginning.

And this cabbage.

Fourteen pounds. Big cabbage. It’s own wonder.

Soup, slaw, sauerkraut. Some for neighbors,

yes. And truth be told, some of it for compost

as much as the kitchen table. Some of this cabbage

for making soil from dirt. A kind of vote

for planet Earth.

Jim Bodeen

9-11 October 2024