UNDERGROUND

BY TRACY SCHLAPP

We have moved into the dark time. In Portland the rains have started, and the leaves that were brilliant yellows and reds have turned into a wet, heavy brown carpet that spills along the sidewalks and over the curb. The crows are stark against the grey sky like black shadows in bare trees. Tomorrow marks the Winter Solstice — the shortest day of the year or from another perspective, the longest night.

It is a time of rest.

Below that matted pile of oak and maple and walnut, the ginkgo leaves from my yard, there is the mud and the bugs, the building blocks for healthy soil. In our workshops, we talk about building the soil for our writing. There is a tendency in all of us to circulate the same ideas, themes, nurse the hurts ... we can remain stuck. Building the soil bed requires bringing in new material — which is part of the work we do in our workshops. The themes we choose, the reading we bring in, even ringing a bell at the beginning are small ways to build the soil. To introduce the larger body of work created last spring, we include these seed exercises that we wrote (and then, stored away) in preparation for our collaborative chapbook Ember & Bark.

STARTED WITH A SEED BY CAROLYN STICKLEY
”The ghosts of fallen leaves
Decaying yet providing
Warm compost for the seeds
Far below.”

SEED: FAITH BY GINA BAKER
“Faith is a seed of positive action. Faith is a seed that emerges from hope.”

SEED BY MANDA MOONLIGHT
“I feel the beckoning
to release above
this soil”

REAP WHAT YOU SOW, SO GO BY SARAH BORSCH
“I’ve got a handful of seeds but I’ve got
nowhere to plant ‘em.
I need to love myself again. To rebuild
and to regrow”

FOUND SEED BY DANNY WILSON
“I found this seed in my pocket ten years ago, maybe more.
I left it there in the breast pocket of this old denim jacket, hidden from light, kept dry. The jacket usually only makes it out of the hallway closet in the fall for gutter cleaning, leaf gathering, and trips to the yard debris dump. I forget about the seed during winter, spring, and summer, only to touch it again after most of the trees have let us see their inner selves once more. This time I see that this cycle — shedding the old, laying bare for us to see, starting fresh without knowing what will grow — repeats and repeats and repeats. When spring comes again, I will plant this old seed and see what we will become.”

GERMINATE
As seedlings sprout out of the ground in the spring, solitary beings will appear. But of course, seeds are surrounded by the life force of micro-nutrients in the soil heated by the sunlight. The seeds work in harmony with a world we cannot perceive — does that make it magic? What is magic but an explanation for worlds beyond our first knowledge? Understandings are based in our most concrete and immediate senses. I see the seedling. I smell the first rain. The sun heats my skin, I taste the soil. This is how I explain the magic, through observation. What of that burst that comes forth? The open-armed seedling calls out: I am here. How does she harness the energy to survive?

Here is a memory from last spring: It is dark when I reach home, I am ruminating about dates for the next writing workshop and details I need to note before I forget. My headlights hit the driveway and reveal the shadow of light rain. When I open the door, a thick fragrance fills the car. It announces itself in high floral tones with the deep bass of humidity. My first thought is daphne, but ours is too small to be so assertive. I get out of the car, turn and look up. Against the dark sky I see a riot of white blossoms in the overhead tree. I turn and look down the darkened avenue. The moonlight reveals what I could not sense in the bustle of daylight. In one upward sweep of the conductor’s baton, the symphony has commenced. | TDS