2 Poems

Porosity

you learn in school

little scuttling things

breathe through spiracles

you learn the skin

is the largest organ

of the human body

you won’t polish

your toenails

in case your toes can’t breathe

but, child,

who says

the soil has porosity?

emotion seeps into me

as I see the field

in which one thing

then nothing

can grow

the saying goes

may the road rise up to meet you

which big man says

soil, rise up, breathe, and live?

I feel myself crumbling

as the earth should crumble

but does not

a myriad creatures

continue their glad ways

in my gut

yet the soil microbiome

the skin of the earth

and its innards

have no words

for their breathless

their hardly recuperable state

Extreme Environments

do you mean shouting

i mean pressure

do you mean competition

i mean petroleum

do you mean war

i mean acidity and alkalinity

do you mean die

i mean go dormant

do you mean sleep

i mean live

do you mean survive

i mean flourish and thrive

do you mean exceptional

i mean expected

you mean expected things

doing the unexpected

think of yourself like a microbe

think yourself into the microbiome