what the soil said

what the soil said
as it microbed its way beneath
distilled its way toward light
and the sustenance of roots

I am neither here nor there
I am process
I am decay
I am life in embryo

I am neither life nor death
but life and death together
nursing yesterday’s opposites
into promise

© BH, 2026

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I was on about opposites and difference. A bit of a nagging theme for me… Too many of us aren’t good with nuance. As if things are so fixed, nothing changes or can ever change. Even so, time changes everything.

Here, I admit to a nod to Hamish Henderson’s ‘Flytin o Life an Daith’.

Then, thinking as a gardener, there’s the soil and the myriad organisms recreating the living out of so much dead matter.