Garden Verses: The Loam Remembers

I am the soil.
 Not metaphor, not symbol—
 just presence
 pressed flat
 under a thousand footsteps
 and one granite gnome.

You walk above me,
 coffee in hand,
 your weight a slow blessing.
 You think of me as earth—
 but I am memory
 in particulate form.

I remember the seed
 before it cracked.
 The root before it reached.
 The rain before it was rain.
 The thunder when it was still a whisper
 in the lungs of clouds.

You speak of tending.
 But you tend nothing I do not already hold:
 the rot that feeds,
 the husks that shelter,
 the soft decay
 that becomes tomorrow’s bloom.

Your gnome—
 he knows me.
 Stands in stillness
 and listens better than you ever could.

But still—
 you pause.
 You gaze.
 You listen.

And so
 I let the bee dance.
 I let the petal curl.
 I let the green reach.
 I let the light in.

Not for you—
 but because you watched
 and meant it.