I Love Dirt! Even when poor, bland, dusty gray, malnourished with no visible creatures crawling, it is striving, maneuvering, clawing for sustenance which we humanoids doltishly claim---and destroy as ours in our ignorance of life's cycles and needs.
Dirt life will survive. Microbes are the living flow with an innate Atlas persistence stronger than ours, a will to live, to build by devouring---then sharing a bite here, a bite there, yielding a crunch to savor for them and for us; a taste of hope on craving lips.
A persistence of billions of living, moving lives flow unseen by our minds and eyes, self-duped to cherish only ourselves, not Archaea, Bacteria, Fungi, Virus, Protists or any of those "creepy nasty things" which are our true Creators, Sustainers and only Hope.
Forty-odd years, a smidge of time to fungi;
its hidden place and past just now revealed:
a gentle sinking of soil, a couple feet across,
and just overnight a magical cluster has risen.
From the depression, Armillaria tabescens
ascends in pale ochres and soft red-browns,
honey mushrooms, to seek and tease light,
and us, for two or three days at most before
melting back to a bioluminescence world
and the long forgotten, nourishing stump
devoured and reincarnated in their galaxy
of patient life and humming green light.
Belated Words 