Sitting with the Compost

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I scratch away at the straw and leaves and burrow my hand into the heap, just like the squirrels did last night. My fingers slide into damp heat, my wrist itchy with dirt and coffee grounds. I hold my arm steady as long as I can as warm seeps into hot climbs into burning scarred skin. 

But now I know it is cooking. 

This decay is squirming with life, microbes devouring their fill of what we could not. Devour. 

What we let go we pour onto a heap, cover it with earth, feed the fire with water, and nourish it until it happily crumbles into compost for the next thing. 

The next seed. 

The next bloom and fruit.

But it is too hot for me right now. My fingers burn with reactions. I need to sit with this pile, be patient with its process, wait for the natural decline in temperature and activity. I will sit under the pepper tree and write. I will cook vegetables I picked from the fields yesterday in cast iron pans and pickle the rest in cloudy mason jars. I will sing and dance and cry and giggle giggle giggle until we cry again in tents, at picnic tables, held in branches. I will talk with the foxes and the deer as they cross the hollow dip in the mountain where the oaks shade and whisper. I will sit through the ecstasy of my hair being brushed, oiled, braided. I will leave love notes in scavenged mailboxes hanging from trees and squish clay from the rock pile between my fingers and onto my face and feel it crack in the heat.

I will wait for the work to do itself before sinking my pitchfork deep into the crumbling result.

My hands bring earth up to my nose. I inhale the depth and life. I scoop and sift and sniff. I know that even this finished pile of nourishment is not broken all the way down. So I sift out the readiest of the sticks and eggshell strewn bunch and toss the rest back in to cook some more. 

The process unfolds. The breakdown continues to nourish. The decay is the point; without it there is no life, no sweet smelling earth, no stone fruit dripping juices onto chin, chest, toes from a smiling mouth.

I have piled, watered, nourished. Now we decay. Now we delight.