Compost: An Ode

Andrew Hudgins

Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
                               JOB 14:4

The beauty of the compost heap is not
the eye's delight.
                Eyes see too much.
                                 They see
blood-colored worms and bugs
                         so white they seem
to feed off
         ghosts. Eyes do not see the heat
that simmers in the moist
                     heart of decay-
in its unmaking making fire-
                          just hot
enough to burn
             itself. In summer, it
burns like a stove.
                 It can-almost-hurt you.
I hold my hand inside the heap and count
one, two, three,
              four.
                   I cannot hold it there.
Give it to me, the heat insists. It's mine.
I yank it back and wipe it
                     on my jeans,
as if
    I'd really heard the words.
                           And eyes


cannot appreciate sweet vegetable rot,
how good it smells
                as everything dissolves,
dispersing
        back from thing
                      into idea.
From our own table we are feeding it
what we don't eat. Orange rind and apple core,
corn husks, .
          and odds and ends the children smear
across their plates
               are fed into the slow
damp furnace
           of decay. Leaves curl at edges,
buckle,
      collapsing down into their centers,
as everything
           turns loose its living shape
and blackens, gives up
                   what it once was
to become pure dirt. The table scraps
and leafage join,
              indistinguishable,
the way that death insists
                     it's all the same,
while life
        must do a million things at once.
The compost heap is both-life, death-a slow
simmer,
       a leisurely collapsing of
the thing
        into its possibilities-
hollyhock and cucumber,
                     bean and marigold-
potato, zinnia, squash:
the opulence
           of everything that rots.