Vox Populi
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Michael Simms: Compost
This poem is from Michael Simms’s new collection NIGHTJAR, published by Ragged Sky Press. To register to attend the FREE ZOOM BOOK LAUNCH at 7pm EST Wednesday, November 10, sponsored by White Whale Bookstore, please click here.
I slide back the lid
of the compost bin
and a cloud of flies
rises with the raw
stench and I see
creatures thriving
in the dark – nematodes,
snails, slugs, wrigglers
seething in the riot
of banana skins, rotifera
twisting through
apple cores releasing
sweetness, feather-winged
beetles digesting
leftover minestrone
and hard crusts
of bread softening
and turning black
with time
Sowbugs
and the bugs
that feed on them,
rove beetles, predatory
mites, formicid ants
and carabid –
We should be grateful
to them all, especially
the invisible mesophilic
bacteria who do
the principled work
of death
In the busy darkness
beneath the garden
earthworms absorb
bacilli through
their epithelia
while fine white strands
of mycelia reach
into the cells of the woody stalk
and hard husk of sunflower
nourishing the roots
of the elderberry
offering the fruit
we harvest and simmer down
to a thick syrup of darkness
we consume a spoon at a time
From Nightjar by Michael Simms. Copyright 2021.
Michael Simms is the founding editor of Vox Populi. His collections of poems include Nightjar (2021) and American Ash (2020), both published by Ragged Sky Press, Princeton.
Vox Populi 
Congats on new book! It will be next on my purchase list. Obviously, great minds think alike; the last two books I read where on soil ecology. I love dirt! If I possessed the work ethic to put together a book of poems it definitely would be called “Dirt.” Go mycelia!
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Thanks, Leo. Yes, soil nourishes us all. Without healthy soil, nothing eats.
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The compost bin is very important in my house as well as the compost pail. There is also a new vita mix composter I’m trying out, but until ithe result mixed with the real stuff, it has no character.
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Good luck!
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So familiar. Thanks, Michael Simms.
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Thanks, Mel!
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