Kiss My Earth by Alice Willitts

[from Womb Proverbs]

 

          In the electrified feathers of creation. 
Soil’s placenta receives and receives us. Air’s 
amniotic sac cushions us. And cushions us;

 

          We can suck and swallow, frown and 
stretch – yawn even, we are so blessed:

          A low-down rolling sensation is 
making some of us sit down sharply.

 

          The people not to trust are five-faced. 
With an expression of looking all ways at 
once. East, South, West, North and Satellite: 

          And they think with their faces. Five-
faced-babies. Growing directly out of tech. 
Their mantra. Never look down! 

          Precious. Fusty. Life. The humid 
brown soil. Is deeply played. The rumble of 
an organ base. Blowing air in the pipes of the 
ground. Bellowing at the five-faced to stop! 

          Other voices vibrant with static. 
Multiply like old man’s beard. Become a 
swamping lanugo on the bodies where 
silence used to thrive;

       
          Think of the five-faced like this. Their 
muck is pungent because they are host to a 
rare smut. A kind of incensed fungus. (And 
with no studies funded). We do not know. 
Where it will put down its tumorous musk 
foot. Where next.

*

 

extinction turns out to be the footsteps of children behind distracted adults 

 

*

 

          Chasing her watery children, the worm 
weeps over blackbirds and ice; 

          And when her motherly insight needs 
the sassy truth of weeds, her children’s 
disruptions become tiny porches. For things 
that have no fellowship in the nosy kerfuffle 
of daytime.

          And I have withheld nothing. I 
thought we had come so far. Made a garden 
contented. Truth littering the lawn like leaves 
we could rake up. Could collect them all. 
Stuff bags with truths. And call ourselves 
prepared;
    

          Made us ponds with decorative solar 
pumps; built patios and shoffices;

          Made us great works, of earth and 
avocado orchards; moved water and drained 
valleys;

          Made us pergolas and hot-tubs; razed 
hillsides and planted forests of sameness; 

          Meanwhile the five-faced lops and prunes 
and the world splits. And the worm? She still 
walks as a war; 

   

          And when she parleys with him now, 
they are carefully raw.
 

Alice Willitts is a plantswoman from The Fens; created and leads The 57 Poetry Collective; is creator and editor of the plantable poetry project DIRT; edited Magma 78 on the theme of Collaborations; is a founding member of the biodiversity project On The Verge Cambridge. Kiss My Earth is her second full collection.

 

Poetry publications:
Something Light Written (Elephant Press, 2023), co-authored with Clare Whistler and an oak tree.
With Love, (winner of the Live Canon collection competition, 2020).
Dear, (winner of the 2018 Magma pamphlet competition).

 

Non-fiction:
Think Thing: an ecopoetry practice (Elephant Press, 2021).
Food Allergy and Your Child: a practical guide for parents (Class, 2007), co-authored with Deborah Carter.