After “Ode to Dirt” by Sharon Olds

Who did not love playing in dirt as a child? Not me. Maybe it was sand at the seashore or mud or clay that you scooped up in your fingers. Or were you a child who was cautioned that dirt was filthy and not to be touched?

The backyard of the house my parents mortgaged was dirt poor. The sandy soil had been stripped. It had lost the nutrients and organic matter that help plants to grow. Depleted, it was no longer fertile enough to make a vegetable garden thrive.

Once the ground had thawed in the spring, I watched as my mother collected all the vegetable peelings and uncooked scraps of food waste in a tub that was stored under our kitchen sink. At the end of each day she would take the bucket out to the backyard, dig a hole in the space where my father had cleared the grass, and bury her gifts in the ground.

When the maple and oak leaves fell in autumn, they were raked into piles that the neighborhood children jumped into. After we grew tired of rolling in the musty pile of crackling orange, red, yellow, and brown leaves, they too were given space in the ground where they rested all winter.

It was rudimentary composting that in time brought us juicy tomatoes, squash, and crispy pole beans each summer.

O dirt,

help us find ways to serve your life,

you who have brought us forth, and fed us,

and who at the end will take us in

and rotate with us, and wobble, and orbit.

—Sharon Olds