The Climate Change book I finished today concludes with several chapters on fertility — both the earth’s & the author’s. In so doing she mentions a beautiful word I have long loved & long wanted to use in a poem. That word is fallow. The poem isn’t quite there, though the verse I’m gonna share, is close. It also prompted a parallel poem instead of a Poetic Factoid.
*****
fallow
by growing single crops super-intensively
the brutal industrial-agricultural industry
has abandoned an ancient methodology
for keeping the earth fertile — they forget fallow
so desperate are they for continuous every increasing
crop yields they dump on (usually chemical) fertiliser, irrigate heavily
& dump more chemicals on to kill the weeds, insects & other pests
that thrive on monoculture
more traditional agricultural societies
use natural methods to maintain soil fertility
including allowing fields to lie fallow
rest, regenerate and re-submit energy into the soil
often by planting nitrogen-fixing legumes
like beans into a variety of crops grown side by side.
but even if the moderns can’t do this
they can allow fields to rest fallow
let the dirt grow dormant,
go quiet, move more slow
rest recuperate recharge
fallow also works in humans
*****
Day 17 A special +1 poem
A love poem with a difference. 100 years.
fallowsoul
Souls, like farm fields,
need to lie fallow for a time
before returning richer than before
so rest now in that far off fallow gold sea
— & may we meet again in the years that follow
gareth roi poet boi 