i lay down in the dirt

Madhuri reads one of her poems from her recently published book, The Teenage Poems – and what I’ve learned since.

i went out and lay down in the dirt
i lay in the dirt
i just lay down in the dirt.
there were weeds around my eyes
and the pepper trees
were like charred hair piled
in the sky. this
and the cat-hairs in the rug
are what is left to me.
the sweet hips have gone twirling
away, and i remember the yellow
lights of the buses
disappearing. i find my stray hairs
between the pages of my ninth diary.
the clouds above me finally have turned
gray. i lay in the dirt.

To me the most interesting thing about this poem is that ever since I wrote it, or it wrote itself, fifty-one years ago… every once in a while the phrase “i lay in the dirt – i just lay down in the dirt,” will come into my mind. I could be anywhere, doing anything – and there is a deeply satisfying thud to the words as they hit me softly. What else can you say after you’ve said that? I don’t see myself as earthy (except, hmmm, certain aspects of my humor!) So maybe these words are medicine that some unconscious wisdom in me is self-applying.

I lived in that dirt-yard house, and I didn’t know at all that life would take me twirling away… far, far beyond anything I could have dreamed. So here I was, just looking that dirt in the eye; and now it seems as if I was really saying goodbye to it, though I didn’t know it then. And the sadness in the poem is… allowed. We get to be sad. We lose lovers, we lose friends, we lose places, we lose, sometimes, even our optimism. It’s all weather, under the skies of the gods and goddesses. Allowed. Necessary. Watch it… and watching comes best through centering; through falling inwards. Sadness is not against that.

What I’ve learned since: To save scraps of things that have beauty for me: poem-bits, pieces of cloth, paper; they might come into their own later, in some new combination. (I saw something I liked on FB recently: “Stay away from anybody who tells you you have too many art supplies.”) And a poem that comes out whole and yet is still cryptic and strange, like this one, might make sense one day when you don’t expect it.

What I’ve learned since: It is very helpful to have an indulgent mother with an attic where you can keep your boxes of diaries and poems and so on, while you are on your travels.