I scramble to use this mind state
to set down a new life for me.
One as structured as the soil was
before we tore it to soft mulch.

Just think – each soil had its long past
thousands of years of traces, worms
squeezed between the roots, and they too
are squeezed between older root forms

or traces of root forms. And small
mouths, smaller than the memory
of your favourite day, in digest
had summarised layers in it.

We freed the soil from all this past
and made it serve us. But smoothly.
And our lives smoothed out to match it.
Then the great plough turned us over

left us in a state – heads up here,
lungs down here, and further down, toes,
really a big jumble. I run
and circuits and false starts within

become films of nuclear tests
in space, these unforeseen objects,
just breathtakingly ill thought through…
May the fallout skins protect me