Burbling

Morning asks to begin before dawn – before I am ready. Though it has taken a week to crawl away from the clutches of a virus, my body tosses and turns, unable to squeeze any more sleep out of 4 a.m. Lately, dreams contemplate the luminous faces of past teachers. A musing of time considers the nonlinear appearances of light – of wisdom – of love.

Yesterday's daylight dipped into the west and a chorus of birdsong continued to burble into a warmer darkness. Night is not as empty as it was in February. The greenhouses are warming enough to warrant shorts and tank tops but I'm the last one to shed the winter layers. It is strange how the work and the building and the people and the plants all amalgamate to affect a million mirco-changes in me. Entanglement is less and less subtle.

Hours of repetitious planting causes the musculature of my fingers and hands to noticeably change. Even the skin underneath my fingernails presses up against the nails somehow differently. While planting, the dirt and oils and chemistry of the plants is shoved deep into the pores of my fingers. Sometimes green or black residue stains the spaces in between my fingers and begins to cake. That feeling makes me feel uncomfortable and irritated. With each shove of the plant plug into the dirt flat, (because really, this type of planting is a violence) I try to conquer or ignore or endure the compulsion to wash that feeling away. We get two breaks, one at 10:30 a.m. and one at noon for lunch; I play it cool but I'm always in a rush to be the first in line to wash my hands. In this case, exposure and repetition does not lessen the trigger of duress. In a 7.5 hour shift, planting by hand, 6 planters in our greenhouse can fill a hoophouse with 100,000 plants. Compulsion – control – repeat.

Yet I grow here. And I am grateful.

East falls on my face before work. And I see

how love is managed –
spring robin bathing
in the creek