Departing Winter

(Women’s History Month)

Snow comes again. Those of us who live this far north know we might get a blizzard even in early May. But we have passed the Equinox - first day of Spring. We have soaked up sunshine, warming temperatures, returning bird song. There are more daylight hours for outdoor work. The Maple's sap is ending its rise and fall change-of-season dance.

The night cold in our house has diminished. We no longer pack the wood stove full enough to maintain flame and strong heat throughout the entire night. I no longer scrape out ash and rebuild the wood stove fire pre-dawn. In fact, whole days pass with the woodstove empty and its soapstone surfaces cool as passive solar sunlight warms our space.

Tending the home hearth fire has framed every day of our winter living: adjusting dampers and reloading wood every couple hours during the day which is the base for sustained heat through the night. As I pull this morning's charred bit of log from the firebox, I know I will miss the rhythm and clear purposeful schedule the wood stove brings to daily life.

The wood stove gifts - wood ash and charred chunks (biochar) - will become part of the gardens, nourishing the life of soil, our food, and thus our bodies. We will bury this charred wood. It will hold onto carbon, hide it and preserve it in the earth for centuries -- counteracting, repairing the astronomical amounts of carbon released into our air and oceans. This release of CO2 is a result of natural cycles, but it has become imbalanced with our fossil fuel-intensive lives; and it is a growing threat to lives on our planet.

The biochar will draw onto itself microbes and nutrients that will serve the plants rooted and growing above it. It will also draw and bind any metals and toxins in the vicinity - cleansing and repairing the soil.

This biochar in my hand, and then in the bucket, holds a number of stories. It holds the story of particles, elements, and Carbon Dioxide molecules born in stars - forming, re-forming, living, dying, living again through the deep time of billions of years. It holds the recent story of an oak or maple pulling heaven and earth together in its thick barked body, exhaling oxygen for our breath. It holds the story of storm winds, weight, age, and crash-falling; of chainsaw, truck, hands, and wood splitter. It holds the story of woodstove and warming a home.

Storied pieces of repair, healing, giving life.

But there's another centuries-old story to which this reparative charred piece connects me: the story of women indigenous to many places on this planet. Women tending underground fires to yield this charcoal. Women intentionally building soil with layers of biochar, ashes, food scraps, animal bones, and byproducts of domestic craftings -- the things of life and death. In Ghana and Liberia the age of some villages can be measured by the layers of dark earth grown each season by the women's work.

Soil holding the story of a village's life, of women's care.

Soil tended that it might tend the tend-ers.

A story circling until the grown and the grower,

the repaired and the repairer are inseparable.

And the story of women -- hands blackened by charred fire scraps, skin darkened by sun and genetics --

takes flight in the dancing hands, soaring words

of one making

women's history,

black history,

youth poet history,

United States of America history.

One with gleaming dark skin

with gleaming bright vision

arrayed in sun colored fabric

crimson crowned gold-beaded hair twists.

Strange - this charred remnant of tree

which healed my home with its flame and heat

soon to repair a portion of garden soil

in so doing will grow life to repair soul and body

in so doing will repair a tiny bit of sky

Strange - this piece that blackens my finger prints

stories me to the inaugural poet's words

of repairing our past,

of enough bravery to see and be light.

Strange how stories weave around a planet

get buried in the soil

and smudge our hands.

~rmlaroche©2021 www.DiasporaOnMadeline.com

Regina Laroche
Diaspora on Madeline Island