In celebration of ANTIGRAVITY’s 200th edition, 198 lines of haiku, and these two lines. Like all Future Crawfish Paper, every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.
Water falls gently
so a seed does not stray far
From its beginning
A branch multiplies
Attached only to itself
It becomes branches
When rain visits the plant,
Whether or not it has thirst,
Condensation. Bliss.
Interchangeable
words. Soil. Dirt. Humus. Compost.
Differentiate.
Crops planted in rows
Perhaps it would be better
A world without rows.
Row is one letter
Removed from the state in which
All food begins, raw.
Raw, an anagram.
For war. All war begins here.
With monoculture.
All rows are not a
Monoculture. That said, all
Monoculture; rows.
Raw rows are not war.
War is born of rows worn raw.
Rows and rows and rows.
You likely assumed
These were going to be light
And jovial. Me too.
Garden metaphors, deep.
Like loose soil in a raised bed
Hands lost within.
Lightness falls on leaf
Photosynthesis. Simple.
Nuclear fusion.
Enough of science
And radical politics
N I M B Y.
A garden grows there.
Carrots. Kale. Lettuce. Parsley.
Let…tuce… speak of that.
A baby carrot
Grows with its roots in the dirt
And tops in the sky.
I believe it tastes great
But others have told me there is a
Kale Conspiracy.
Veggie puns. Often,
ruffage around the edges.
Yet lettuce stays sharp.
Lettuce eat Parsley.
Lettuce use it as garnish.
Lettuce make salad.
Add Parsley. Add Kale.
Add Lettuce. Add Carrots. Nuts?
Perhaps vinaigrette.
If you have no yard
You can still harvest salads
With just a few pots.
Food deserts abound.
One garden can’t heal the world.
But awareness can.
Yes in your backyard.
Understand process. And pain.
Growth takes time. Always.
A garden changes.
Becomes what you want. Or don’t.
Inevitably.
Revolution, based
On land. The basis of all
Independence. Land.
Malcom X. On land.
Basis of freedom, justice,
And equality.
That was paraphrased
To fit into haiku form,
Not to make light of.
Farmland changes hands.
Becomes a vehicle for
Structural violence.
Inevitably?
No. A garden becomes what
You let it become.
What you choose to grow
The way that you choose to grow
A microcosm.
Everything dies.
Is that, four? five? syllables?
What is everything?
All-encompassing,
A backyard ecosystem,
Metaphors abound.
Fruits of your labor
Dying for you to be free
of malnutrition.
A root cause of health
Socially, spiritually.
Sure. Physically.
You reap what you sow.
The seeds of change, as above,
from hands, so below.
You plant a garden.
You plant happiness. Do you?
Are you happy now?
That’s small potatoes.
Find your contentment instead.
Starched. Firm. Well rounded.
A layered onion,
The deepest core, safe from dirt,
it grows bitter first.
Transplants and gardens,
perceived in any context;
Two peas in a pod.
We have reached the end
Of this metaphor section,
Though cycles abound.
Practical advice
Is often overrated,
In my opinion.
Better it is fed
esoterically and
with obfuscation.
Otherwise the risk
of fundamentalism
Threatens to run high.
Stolid, unmoving,
An ignorant know it all,
there is no worse thing
In gardening only
of course. This does not extend
To regular life.
All things food growing
are irrelevant to all
other life facets.
If it were not so
Dialect would be dripping,
Soaked in metaphor,
And aphorisms,
Analogies regarding
Roots, seeds, branching out.
So. To clarify.
Fundamentalism. It’s
Fine everywhere else.
Just not in gardens.
Or in farming lexicon.
N I M B Y.
In your backyard. Where
you feel safe, and no one cares
About your wayays.
Where no one hears you
Where nothing is connected
To anything else.
Pure isolation.
Total systemic control,
It is YOUR garden.
Interconnection,
Ecosystemic weaving,
Reciprocation.
None of that happens.
No way. You have built borders,
Delineated.
But alas, like haiku,
Every solitary line,
Every syllable,
Every poem as well.
Inevitably a part
Of a bigger whole.
What you grow matters.
How you grow matters more still.
And not just to you.
Sand in an hourglass,
so are the days of our lives,
Matter of this kind.
Weave yourself into
Do not wiggle yourself out,
There is no escape.
The web of life spreads
And always death will feed it
This is motion, breathing.
Do not push it out.
Invite the cycles, with soil,
plants, insects, fungus.
The circle of life
It’s like the wheel of fortune
It’s the leap of faith.
The carbon cycle.
nitrogen cycle, water
cycle, oxygen.
Circulate notions,
Worlds where food is abundant,
Does not raze, straight lined.
Flows instead around,
Transferred by organisms
Begins in backyards.
Where no one hears you.
Where you do not have control,
But are in control.
If you’ve got questions for the Dirt Nerd, feel free to email ian@hotplantsnursery.com or visit @hotplantsnursery.
illustrations Rachel Speck
