I leave you to your planting and I will work with minds. Your finger nails and hands grime over with spring loam, cedar chips; your back bent against a chilly sun as the holes open up to receive new trees…drinking in fresh water and settling down again, taking root; eager to grow deeper into new land. The small trees belong there where planted and they feel it; they know it.
Meanwhile, I gather data. There are no roots on these bubble sheets; just numbers. There is no fertility here; just frustration. I do not labor in a correct space; a ripened field. My land is filled with boulders and crooked places and soil which suffers damage. You, on the other side of the city, work within a truer place; a cleared land. You labor in a field ripe for planting with the appropriate fruits and the right tools and the healed ground.
I am stuck. We are stuck. Mismatched standards and efforts and families and children; I am busy building a fence. I surround the yard with driven stakes and I fill the soil and rope in patches of grass and close off the yard from trespassing. But I forgot the seeds. We all forgot the seeds.
I stand and watch; waiting for something to grow. I wait for a long time. We will be waiting forever, I think.
I rest underneath the tree which you planted in the correct soil with the sharpened tools and the healthy seeds. I think about things as I sit below purple blossoms and fresh spring air; far from the heated room where they can not read and where the tools are dull and broken; the soil unwilling…
690 Saint Paul 