Devon Moore

"Soil is a record of the past." - from Organic Gardening magazine

The knotweed, the hawkweed,
the pigweed, the violets from
the acidic soil. From city to city
I carry my dad's ashes, carry his eyes
in my head, bear witness to the places
he could lay rest. The windswept places,
the blackberry borders, those disease-
prone hybrid tea roses, a persimmon tree.
When I bring him home, I think
today I could be a rosy-cheeked matriarch
digging a hole, today I could be a messenger
like the weeds, today I could be clover or
the smell of my grandma's eucalyptus tree
that died last year. Today I could be
the deepest taproot making its way to a vein
of water through the saltiest earth,
the water that I drank
and my dad drank
and my grandma drank
and we all pissed out
into the creeping soft-grass,
the nettles, the spear thistle,
the nightshades, and through the air
to the gathering sky. The hurricanes
came and it rained
and it rained. When
the eye looked over us I stood there,
knee-deep in the ocean that came
to my grandma's front porch,
all the roses around me drowning,
the pecan tree uprooted,
its roots a tangled
mass of dying paths
once tunneling
through the under-earth
looking so much like dendrites
tendriling, exposed,
without a brain,
all the space the tree had made
to get what it needs
and no place left to go,
and I thought what a body,
what an upside down burial,
what another wasted
opportunity to open
an urn, what a glistening
black dirt gap, what a hole.