by Judith Skillman
Everything You Need to Know About Life Lies Buried in the Compost
1.
I’d never heard of thermophilic bacteria
until the rustic cage had long received its first
load: broccoli florets long gone, their bodies
full of decay & tempered cellulose; egg shells
& coffee grounds that every kitchen conceals;
potato eyes that see everything in the Universe,
silent to report the neighbor’s domestic disputes;
molded yogurt, which, I’ve learned, holds the reigns
to its own enigmatic galaxy of micro-organisms; rice,
swollen with bloat & disgust; & onion skins,
their epidermal honeycombs tightly packed against
one another like catacombs for the dead.
2.
Life resurrects itself like some pedigree of alchemy,
certainly no more mysterious than the progression
of the common cold. A recycling of the elements, sub-species
of earth, wind & fire. Each biochemical reaction building
upon the previous biochemical reaction, a colossal green webbing,
interactive, interdependent, inherently inherit,
a dexterous blueprint that seldom makes an error.
It is in your fingerprint & the microbes that pulse
with Brownian movement three feet under the surface
of the ground. The cilia & pseudopodia, flagella
with silvery whips, propelling sluggish bodies through invisible
rivers of form & function. There are no secrets, only things
that we haven’t figured out.
3.
If you dig deep enough, you might find the breaths
of lost civilizations: buttons & bones, instructions for building
a primitive boat, scissors that cut to the quick, theories
that didn’t hold up, migratory routes of ancient birds, frameworks
of oratories that didn’t get uttered & that no one ever heard,
jellied matrices of plastic prototypes, carbon-laden asteroid pellets,
& and a host of brittle exoskeletons of arthropods who ran out of ocean
in your backyard.
John Dorroh once wrote a poem sitting in an isolated red wooden chair atop a mountain off the Ring Road in Iceland. “It was the most peaceful period of time I’ve ever had. And the poem turned out well.” On the other hand, most of the time he writes surrounded by noise and interruptions. “I’ve learned to adapt,” he said. Five of his poems have been nominated as Best of the Net. Others have appeared in over 100 journals such as River Heron Review, Feral, North Dakota Quarterly, Selcouth Station, and Stone Poetry Quarterly. He once won Editor’s Choice Award for a regional journal and received enough cash for a sushi dinner for two.
Judith Skillman paints expressionist works in oil on canvas and board. She is interested in feelings engendered by the natural world. Her paintings have been featured on the covers of Thin Air Magazine, Pithead Chapel, and Torrid Literature. Work appears in The Penn Review, Artemis, Raven Chronicles, and other journals. Skillman has studied visual art at McDaniel College, Pratt Fine Arts Center, and Seattle Artist League (SAL). Shows include The Pratt, Galvanize, and Seattle Artist League. Visit judithskillman.com, https://www.etsy.com/shop/JkpaintingsStore, https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/823323.