Open Ground
Rebecca A. Spears
It’s in the small gestures that I learn purpose.
Once I was busy as a gravedigger
opening the earth, preparing it to
receive death, mine or someone else’s remains.
Or I was busy as a fire ant, overturning
the ground, making it treacherous for others.
Now I un-pot the fig sapling—it’s root-bound
in a bucket that last year swallowed it.
I’d expected, at most, its demise or—
nothing. I’d tied my hope tightly to failure.
That’s what seemed certain, as summer and drought
and withering, crisp leaves curling brown.
But now I expect this green sapling to thrive
in the new ground I opened and softened.
Yesterday a swallowtail at sunset
lit the black soil, resting, slowly fanning
the air and the freshly watered earth.
I swear its blue outline iridesced
and flashed in the dusk. And my world—
fell open—alive, on fire, and blinking.
Rebecca A. Spears
Rebecca A. Spears, author of “The Bright Obvious” and “Brook the Divide” (forthcoming, 2020), has her work included in TriQuarterly, Calyx, Crazyhorse, Barrow Street, Verse Daily, and other journals and anthologies. She has received awards from the Taos Writers Workshop and Vermont Studio Center; she is a recent Pushcart nominee.