WEBVTT

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Now, this is a later
and very different poem,

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more in the way I'm writing
now, although it's maybe

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10 years old.

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It's a poem called "Digging."

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And it's a poem
that's addressed,

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in theory, to a gardener--

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I mean, to a woman who likes
to garden, not a professional.

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I say that it's addressed
to such a woman.

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I said ostensibly because,
like all of the things

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I come to eventually realize
it's really addressed to me.

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One midnight, after a day when
lilies lift themselves out

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of the ground while
you watch them,

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and you come into the house
at dark your fingers grubby

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with digging, your eyes vague
with the pleasures of digging,

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let a wind raised
from the south climb

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through your bedroom window,
lift you in its arms--

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you have become as
small as a seed--

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and carry you out of the house,
over the black garden, spinning

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and fluttering, and drop
you in cracked ground.

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The dirt will be cool,
rough to your clasped skin

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like a man you have never known.

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You will die into the ground
in a dead sleep, surrendered

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to water.

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You will wake suffering, a
widening pain in your side,

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a breach gapped
in your tight ribs

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where a green shoot
struggles to lift itself

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upwards through the tomb of
your dead flesh to the sun,

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to the air of your garden
where you will blossom

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in the shape of your own self,
thoughtless with flowers,

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speaking to bees, in the
language of green and yellow,

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white and red.

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