22
turning tennessee clay to prayer
by Larry Thacker
The landscape guys have been tilling
the backyard for three hours
just to manage
a fair enough bit of garden space,
ten rows if we’re lucky, but they’ve barely
disturbed this anciently waiting
Tennessee clay,
tiller bouncing in protest
with the grassy maze of stubbornness,
carving by slow inches.
It’s odd how different the soil here is
compared to the black softness
back in Kentucky.
I could jam my hands
down into ground there without the help
of a tool.
Here it’s like punching sidewalk.
The clods of earth there in the Old Dark
Bloodied Grounds
fall apart in your
hands like easy prayers. Here is like squeezing
a rock, like hard time praying,
when you don’t know what the answer
will ever be.
How will anything ever grow?
How will a prayer be heard?
The grass sure does grow fine, though. Why
wouldn’t anything else? Cucumbers? Corn?
Kale and spinach? Runners? Tomatoes?
The idea of burrowing into the ground here
to pray seems impossible.
(Cont.)