Out of the Darkness - Molding Muck

An amber warning, awning sky,

bleached ochre stretched beyond the pale.

old pickets strike, scabbed line, forlorn

to keep out trespass, trampling corn,

now lawn of stubble ash from flame.

Behind the beech - burnt umber reach -

here, soon the harvest, out of sight,

those moles, the velvet underground,

where mycorrhiza network found,

and unknown magic stirs where ploughed.

For now, as Fall, the leaves descend -

untidy mat, for brooms assumed,

smoke, bonfires leaving warmer globe,

a heady potion brewing there -

but worms in clay, leafmould so mold.

As English spells tell witch the word,

those nutrients promote rebirth,

so out of darkness spring is spawned -

the Greenman works his wonder-world,

and all from nature’s waste resolved.

Our harvest is not grain alone,

but later gifts of withered blades,

that auxin, cutting petioles,

leech nitrate nodules out from roots,

in symbiotic party time.

A host recycled from the old,

just as our host, that Greenman told,

the feast passed over, death to life;

post-prandial, soiled starter served

in snowdrop, jasmine, crocus corm.

I saw that can and thought the worst -

corrupt uncovered, muck revealed,

but then, next day, as gloom descends,

out of the darkness looms - a seed,

less of the month as the whole year.