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

 

This poem is about: 
Me
My family

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