Dirty Deeds

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Dirty Deeds

“My music has roots which I dug up from my

childhood--musical roots buried in the darkest

soil.”--Ray Charles.

Within the grand & colossal concrete

     canyons, we use window boxes and

        balcony pots to place commercial hardware

     store top soil so that we can grow things;

you know like carrots,

                       marijuana,

                       baby banzai,

                       cherry tomatoes,

                       chives & herbs,

                       exotic ferns,

                       colorful flowers,

                       & pigmy corn.

Of course, not everyone enjoys

gardening, accepting that awesome

responsibility of tending something

alive & dependent--guess it just

depends on where & when one

was introduced to it.

I love coming across reclaimed

empty lots, or grimy alleys where

people had erected raised beds 

of imported dirt, places where 

city slickers could raise beautiful

& delicious crops.

One summer I romanced a woman I had met in

college, who lived off the grid, with no indoor

plumbing, no electricity, bathing in a nearby

creek, heating with a converted 50 gallon oil

barrel--in a rough-hewn cabin, with a loft for

a bedroom under a skylight. She was a talented

jewelry maker, & she went to town & craft fairs

to sell her wares.

She had two green thumbs--could grow anything

it seemed. She’d recruit me to work with her in a

half-acre garden, trading “sex for labor” as she was

fond of saying. She placed large blue plastic rain

barrels under the down spouts

                             After several grueling hours of

                      working in the dirt with my bare

                  hands, I experienced a kind of

           transformation, an epiphany, whereby

        somehow I connected with the soil,

became one with the earth as the

moist black dirt caked my nostrils

& clothes & boots-- but as much as

I enjoyed all that,  I think I was there

more for the woman than for the

dusty siren song of the soil, or the

lure of the fecund land.

The earth is mother

for each of us, a pity

we disrespect her.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub