First Order of Things

by Wang Ping

First Order of Things
— For Gary Snyder

Today I rowed my first 12k in the Mississippi, and earned my first blisters.

The first shovel into the thawed earth, rich with compost from food scraps, bones, eggshells, leaves, worms, bacteria, rain, ice and patience.

The first planting of potatoes from last year’s garden, pink sprouts and green skin, excited to re-enter the earth.

The first breaking of dirt in my hands, dark earth promising another year’s harvest.

The first sprouting: garlic, leeks, dandelions, peonies, lilies, fiddleheads, creeping Charlie, all beautiful and delicious. (The first harvest from my garden, first sautéed egg with garlic leek, first robin’s visit from Texas and old nest under my roof, asking why I’m not sharing food with her. First filling of bird bath, after a long freeze, first line of chickadees splashing ecstasy.

First meal under the sun, listening to Gary’s “Long Hair” from 40 years ago, his fingers gnarly from fixing the generators for power and poetry, living off grid on the Sierra, my fingers blessed with blisters and black earth, fingers that know how to dig, plant, nurse, cook, feed, write poetry, fingers that refuse to point, woke, destroy, accuse, sow hate.

Fingers that vow to spread love and love only, through labor and devotion . . . intertwining west and east, mountain and prairie.

And then the deer runs inside me
The plants sprout inside me
The robin sings in chorus with chickadees
The garden blooms inside me
The Mississippi flows through me
And the world, the cosmos
As I eat my first bowl of garlic leek with eggs in the garden, under the sun, listening to poetry