Agraria_Journal_Summer_2022

AGRARIA JOURNAL 2022 25 Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. Tao Te Ching , Stephen Mitchell’s translation Made prayer with the Earth this morning, and turned soil as penance to call upon Spring. The snow-fed soil gave easily to the shovel as the clods revealed fresh meat for the winged ones who visit me daily. The coffee can chock-full of composted scraps was dumped and covered with the petition for a good crop of whatever would be planted there. A plan to cover the poison ivy vine with clematis and roses emerged to eye and nose, futuristic sensory camouflage. Two stray bulbs sang their identities and said where they wanted to go as four Vs of geese, eight in each, announced their journey no further than the lake north of where I dwell. So, how do you like Dayton? is a common repeating question for those who know I sat in another place for over 30 years. I look at them, trying to figure out what they really want to know. Just what are they asking me? There are libraries here, art museums and exhibits, gatherings for poetry and theater, families cooking out in the park. I’m sure there are bars with babes and dudes posturing for digits and friend requests on social media, hoping sparks will fly and loneliness will flee. It is, for some, a shrunken town of abandoned houses, indebted students, military veterans, and frustrated workers who were gainfully employed until Mr. Charlie took his jobs and ran for the border. A food desert created when farms became suburbs, cut off from the city by a concrete path siphoning dollars out of communities that limp along hoping for a better tomorrow. But, if an answer is necessary, I guess I like it here. I feel needed and appreciated; and, As long as I can worship while digging in dirt, my soul is happy, my Ancestors are smiling, and so am I. OMOPÉ CARTER DABOIKU IS ARTIST- IN-RESIDENCE AT AGRARIA. Worshipping at the Church of Dirt