The poetry of the earth is never dead.

- John Keats
from On the Grasshopper and Cricket

Gardens, farms, things we tend. Someone says make something. I pick up a pen, you a trowel, he a paintbrush, she a spoon.

We're always tending. Always making.

I'm the Director of Poetry for the Denver County Fair — a modern twist on old-fashioned fun. Speed texting meets Aunt Bee's pickles. I'm excited for Bounty, a poetry contest seeking poems inspired by agriculture, food, gardens and farms. { psst, the contest is open to Colorado writers. Win ribbons and prizes! }

I'm thinking about the earth, how we work it and ourselves. I'm digging for answers in the soil. Hands deep, I want some sort of cleansing, some clarity. Clearing the bramble, I stumble into an answer:

It seems like you could, but
you can’t go back and pull
the roots and runners and replant.
It’s all too deep for that.
You’ve overprized intention,
have mistaken any bent you’re given
for control. You thought you chose
the bean and chose the soil.
You even thought you abandoned
one or two gardens. But those things
keep growing where we put them—
if we put them at all.
A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall.
Even the one vine that tendrils out alone
in time turns on its own impulse,
twisting back down its upward course
a strong and then a stronger rope,
the greenest saddest strongest
kind of hope.

- Kay Ryan
A Certain Kind of Eden

Have you a garden of poems? What's growing? Do you have a favorite poem of the earth ?