Letter to the Soil

Skye Gilkerson

Back then you were the surface, the floorboards beneath carpets of sage and bluestem, a row of graphite scratches at the bottom of the drawing.

We thought we could peel you back, extract from you each autumn, never asking what you need. Sliced and scattered, you fell into the wind: my grandfather’s childhood covered in dust, cerulean skies filled with clouds closing in like smoke, nothing but his own hands in front of his face.

We didn’t know back then you were the brain and the guts, a sprawling jungle in miniature, containing telegraphs for trees and collaborating with sunlight and rain and microorganisms to digest the world above, our bodies stretching backward and forward in time through your hidden milky way of regeneration.