Dirty Paws

from “The English Patient”  Michael Ondaatje

But the dog’s paw was a wonder:  the smell of it never suggested dirt.  “It’s a cathedral.”

Her father had said, so and so’s garden, that field of grasses, a walk through cyclamen--

A concentration of hints of all the paths the animal had taken during the day.

I smell my own paws, the ones that dipped

And bled into the black soil of my father’s

Farm in the Sacramento Valley

In which we grew sorghum and winter wheat

Before the paths took me to Seattle’s glacier sifted

Earth where my hands pushed aside rocks

To plant the tulip bulbs so my infant

Daughters would be greeted by brightness

In their early springs.  Now the bouquet

On my skin smells of the deeply red

Dirt of Hawai`i which has covered

All but a hint of lands past.  In two jars

I keep small specimens of my past

So that one day I can water them and rub the mud

On my hands again, breathe deeply of the gardens

Where I worshipped the things that grew

Of my hands, smell my paws.