Kale and the Compost Pile
Kale prides himself on compost
determined to keep avocado pits and plantain peels
off the truck and out of the landfill.
Refusing to dump his refuse in the container
of transport to transmit its glistening wave
on a river of fossil fuel.
He revels in the wonder of decomposition,
of letting the leftovers stew themselves
past the point of softness, back to the earthy loam
of origins, into the web of microbial masterpieces
of disintegration and recombination, warming with rot
infusing the soil with energetic combinations of decay
of mold, mole munched, worm wandered,
all tattering itself in a dissolve of kaleidoscopic
particle surrender to time and heat,
to sun speeding up the process,
to new scents wafting from the chicken wire
coop he built and hinged at the top,
an open enclosure to let the air do its job, let the rodents
wander in and out to speed the transformation
mixing their own waste into next summer’s garden
splashing his parings and stems onto the pile
where his knife’s no longer needed.
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Sarah Wyman is a frequent contributor to Lightwood. Read more of her work; scroll down to our Search Button/Link, insert her name and click.
Sarah Wyman’s volume of poems, Fried Goldfinch, is published by Codhill Press. She writes and teaches on verbal / visual intersections and lives in the Hudson Valley where climbing feet kick dust down to a river-sea. Her work has appeared in Aaduna, Mudfish, Ekphrasis, San Pedro River Review, Potomac Review, Petrichor Review, Chronogram, Shawangunk Review, A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Poets of the Hudson Valley (Codhill), and other venues. Finishing Line Press published her chapbook Sighted Stones (2018).
