Just Dirt

Just: 1) Only, merely or simply “It’s just a joke” 2) behaving according to what is morally right and fair “A just cause”

Simple dirt, this living soil, fed by our ashes and the slowly decaying plants that we had nurtured

Just dirt…that is, righteous dirt. The ancient healing earth, our silent and loamy benefactor

The rich-smelling, good-tasting, long-lasting, crop-nurturing humus that provides for us all

Those happy dirty children, those wagging dogs rolling in good dirt, this tired farmer’s dirty hands

Dirt shoved aside, carried off, compressed into lifeless, random heaps, dumped and forgotten

Carelessly robbed of its roots and enslaved by the pitiless alien lords of industrial agriculture

Carried off with all the chemicals they so often overuse to kill profit-cutting weeds and pests

They forced up some crops, got their bonuses and left us to just watch the poisoned soil blow away

Just dirt beneath our bare brown feet, this so-simple dirt that we simply cannot live without

The ground a living layer filled with bacteria and microbes – they who share almost all of our DNA

Honest dirt, from which we were created and will return, according to so many of our religious myths

Dirt Simple some say, but we know it’s much more, that close-knit, moist and dark bio-community

Crusted with salt left by their dried up fossil water, magnifying and wafting toxins into the air

Preserved with all the care of cost accounting, then sold off for yet one more lame, cloned stripmall

Casually raped with grunting, smoky-toothed bulldozers, auctioned off to the highest bidder

Torn up, trampled down, littered upon - then ignored, scorned and casually pissed on…in passing

This land that my family farmed with love for generations, the good earth that we so treasured

Magically bringing forth the food that supported us and our livestock, and even the wild birds

We paced it and crumbled it between our fingers, for its health defined our very sense of well-being

Planted the trees that blocked the wind to help to hold the soil - and we pulled the weeds by hand

All forms of toxics are spilled on, drained into and buried under it:And we are ashamed of being dirty

Naked too long, growing cracked and hard, unable to sponge up the gentle rains anymore

You - go pour this stuff out over there in the dirt, and hurry up, we got more real work to do

Scoop it out by the ton, crush it, wet it down, chemically extract and leave it laying in leaching piles

Walking barefoot amid the seedlings in a warm summer rain, babies with us as we tend our fields

Turn it over gently to smell the richness of the spring, rejoice over the good rain, along with the soil

Bury grandfather with our ancestors in this land he loved, ache in spirit along with the drought

Built our home with the mud and straw from this place, drew sweet, clean water from beneath

Crowned with rusting metal, faded plastic, and broken glass, now it oozes awful liquids

Absolutely ignored until it accidentally fouls us while on our busy, self-important errands

Feces mixing in with the mud, poisoned, but still able to harbor disease-inducing micro-organisms

Upon catching our drifting mercury and lead, hydrocarbons and PCBs, its toxic dust fills our lungs

Just dirt, a rich home, the very source of all our sustenance, that ultrathin skin of the earth

Ours to use up and despoil, waste and defile, gouge and quarry, in absolutely any way we see fit

Miraculous, fragile blessing built over thousands of years, we must preserve it for our children

Let it dry up, die and blow away, WhatEver, but hey, we intend to remain, purposefully unaware