Listening to Soil

by ivan cole

My daughter is an artist
who listens to the soil
and believes it can
touch the soul.

A collection of frequencies or pitches
some low and rolling
some high and peaking sharply.
Laid out on top of each other
the nearly constant low frequency underscore
the occasional then insistence and repeated
high frequency rise and falls.

By immersing myself
I can begin to understand this new language.
Without a reference
I can reach for its essence.

Through the microscope
I must resist the temptation to translate.
Protozoa -long and then, covered in fibres
Bacteria- globular and constantly interacting
A multitude of long thing fungi strands

Their forms, sounds and motion
are themselves
but they are not the other
We, they are earth.