Microbiome

While we live, we ourselves are inhabited
– William Bryant Logan, ‘Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth’

In the earth, prepared and silent, what will I
be offering you? It’s said the menu opens

with the liver and the brain, for their wealth
of enzymes and water, the heart
before the bones. But so many of you

are already here at this soft table, always hungry,
unfussy. I’ve been feeding you protein,

fibre, starch, sugar, paper and ink,
self-consciousness, the crimson jolt of the rosella
in the leafless tree, my own dying cells,

hesitation in the face of violence, more water,
the scent of the skin of the one I love,

confusion with almost everything else.
And what will you make of all this
turning? Warm compost, what remains.