Black Gold
I think there was something in the dirt in my grandmother’s backward
The dirt that lay black under her lilac bush
The dirt that smeared across my blue jeans every spring saturday
The dirt that hid under my fingernails
And nourished and fed the oak tree and the daffodils
Gave life to the grass that I fell on time and time again
There was something in the dirt in my grandmother’s backyard
The dirt that turned to mud so easily
The dirt that dried on my eager hands to peel off in flakes in her bathroom sink
The dirt that made my own garden of eden flourish
There was something in the dirt in my grandmother’s backyard
The dirt that turned to mud so easily
The dirt that turned to mudslides so easily
The dirt that flowed and covered everything when it poured down the hill like molasses
Pushing the swing set to boundaries of my stomping ground
The dirt that turned to mud that turned to mudslide that left a river of brown
Across my grandmother’s
vibrant
green
grass
There was something powerful in the dirt in my grandmother’s backyard
Something that made her tea roses grow when the neighbor’s would not
Something that made her green thumb spread up her arm to her shoulder to her head
Something that made her kind
Something that made her gentle
Something that made her voice a little softer when she spoke to her snapdragons
Something that made her yard the place to be
For bees
And butterflies
For bees
And butterflies
And me
There was something in the dirt in my grandmother’s backyard
That made her soil like black gold