Get Down, Get Dirty

To celebrate National Poetry Month -- April -- I've been participating in an online poem-a-day workshop with about 100 poets. Lead by poets Molly Fisk and Lisa Chilar, who provided daily writing prompts, the poems contributed are astonishingly good. My poetic contributions turned out to be more like a poem every other day and weren't nearly as artful and engaging as those from other participants. But, I tell myself, comparison isn't the point. It's the poem that matters.

Ever bookish, it occurred to me that a collection of poetry from the workshop is sitting there waiting to be collected and shared with poetry lovers outside the closed workshop. But, creating a collection would take time and money, both in short supply for the busy poets who participated. I just wish you could read some of them. They're that good.

In the meantime, below is one of my poems from the workshop inspired by the spring planting going on in my garden.

Get Down, Get Dirty

Under fingernails

and among cuticles,

between thumb and forefinger that

rub grit, roll clay.

Hand gripping trowel

to trench the earth, happily

chewing up ground,

coffee cup conversing with potting soil,

shovel cuddling rake, ready.

All together now

turn yourself,

prepare yourself,

show yourself,

grow yourself.

Be the dirt you are

in the yard,

in the hand,

under the plow,

in the wind with the water, sprinkling

rivulets down your back.

If he was here, we’d be dirty as

this garden.

We’d roll in the furrows and mounds.

Have sex.

Hot, gritty sex, sex, while neighbors steal peeks with permission

prurient faces pressed to fence boards

eyeing through the cracks.

Roll on prickly grass.

Hot spring.

Spread seeds.

Spread love.

Get down.

Get dirty.