After blue dye spilled through my fallopian tubes, and I reclaimed my pain-shot breath, I walked the neighborhood. It was a hot spring. Ants were building the chambers of their mounds. The upper chamber designed to keep the brood and queen cool when heat thickens in sifted calm. Silent ants scrambled within the mystery of storm. That afternoon, a different silence and undeterred coming and going, their linear climb a diagramed purpose. Your tubes look clear, my doctor confirmed. There are no more fertility tests left to do. As a child I kicked excavated soil with the edge of my sneaker back into the ant mound. I used to call soil dirt. Dirt is different than soil: nothing grows in dirt; it has no history. When organic matter or rock—parent material—deposits, then ages, soil forms. When it washes away, it becomes a pile of dirt. Ants turn and aerate it, water reaches plant roots, and the soil building process begins again. Soils lie where earth, air, water, and life meet. My body, body.
Fischer, Nan. “The Difference Between Soil and Dirt.” Naturespath.com. Better Planet, July 10, 2018.
Eleanor Kedney is the author of Between the Earth and Sky (C&R Press, 2020), a finalist for the 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards and the 2020 Best Book Awards. She is also the author of the chapbook The Offering (Liquid Light Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared in journals, magazines, and anthologies. She is the recipient of the 2019 riverSedge Poetry Prize (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) and a finalist in the 2020 Mslexia Poetry Competition. Kedney is the founder of the Tucson branch of the New York-based Writers Studio and served as the director for ten years. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Stonington, Connecticut, with her husband, Peter Schaffer, their dog, Fred, and their cat, Ivy. Learn more at eleanorkedney.com.
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Author: Eleanor Kedney
Eleanor Kedney is the author of Between the Earth and Sky (C&R Press, 2020), a finalist for the 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards and the 2020 Best Book Awards. She is also the author of the chapbook The Offering (Liquid Light Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared in journals, magazines, and anthologies. She is the recipient of the 2019 riverSedge Poetry Prize (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) and a finalist in the 2020 Mslexia Poetry Competition. Kedney is the founder of the Tucson branch of the New York-based Writers Studio and served as the director for ten years. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Stonington, Connecticut, with her husband, Peter Schaffer, their dog, Fred, and their cat, Ivy. Learn more at eleanorkedney.com.
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