Get down on the ground.
Let your eyes close.
And let it be outside.
And let it be late in the day.
The light is going.
And going earlier than it was.
You are on your knees.
Both of them down in the dirt.
Your weight forward onto one hand.
Take a breath.
And let it go out into the cold.
Again.
Feel the air on the back of your neck.
It came in some night while you were not out here.
And it isn't leaving.
Now the hand you are leaning on.
Spread the fingers and press down.
The top of it is cold.
An inch of cold.
And no more than that.
Push through.
Underneath,
The ground is still warm.
It took all summer to get that way,
And it is letting it go slower than the air did.
Down where you are about to work.
It is still the other season.
It is going out of the ground.
From the top down.
A little more every night.
That is why it is now.
There is a bag on the ground beside you.
Open it.
Take one out.
Feel what is in your hand.
Browned.
Dry the whole way through.
A skin on it like paper.
Booth.
Flaking off of your fingers where they close.
It weighs almost nothing.
Turn it over.
There is a flat plate.
On the bottom.
With a few old roots come off it.
Try his thread.
The other end comes to a point.
Hold it up in what's left of the light.
And look at it.
There's nothing on it.
No color.
No green anywhere.
Nothing about it says what it is.
Or whether it's any good.
Or whether there's anything in it at all.
You could not tell a live one from a dead one by looking.
Nobody could.
You take it on the word of whoever filled the bag.
Point up,
That is all of it you get to know.
Open the ground.
Whatever is in your other hand for a tool.
You're going.
The first of it is cold and tight.
And then it gives.
And what comes up off the blade is dark.
And it isn't cold.
Go deeper than seems called for.
Three times the length of the thing you are holding.
You know that without anyone telling you.
Deep enough that nothing on the surface reaches it.
Deep enough that when it is hard cold up here.
Down there,
It isn't.
Set it in.
Point up.
Pull the dirt back over and press it flat with your palm.
It is gone.
Look at the bed.
It is exactly the way it was before you knelt down.
Nothing showing anywhere on it.
To the next one.
You are good at this.
Your hands have the depth without measuring it.
You do not count them,
And you do not hurry.
And you keep going after the light has gone.
Because this part doesn't need light.
Nobody is out there.
Nobody's coming out to watch this.
There is nothing out here to see.
Now go back to the last bed you put in like this one.
You have got the pudding in.
The cold.
The dirt worked into the knuckles.
The ache across the front of the thighs from kneeling that long.
Now find the morning you came out to look at it.
Stay down,
Keep working.
What have you arranged not to be there for?
Your hands do not stop.
Go forward from here.
The cold comes down through the ground.
The way it has already started to.
And it gets all the way to this.
And it stays on it a long time.
Ain't longer than anything with no green in it.
Ought to last.
And then it turns.
Up above.
It comes up.
Nobody tells it.
It comes up through the same dirt.
You are pressing flat right now.
In its stance.
And it opens.
And is whatever color it was going to be.
Put yourself in that morning.
You are not in it.
You will be somewhere.
You will be busy with something reasonable.
And it will open in the morning.
And stand out there all day.
With nobody on it.
And go over.
And be down by the end of the week.
And none of that weeps on you.
People have called you patient for this.
Feel whether that is what it is.
You never found out whether a single one of them was any good.
All winter it stays exactly as good as you left it.
You set the distance yourself.
Six inches of dirt in a whole winter.
And the piece of it you take is this one.
In the dark.
On your knees.
With nothing showing.
There is one left in the bag.
Take it out.
Feel the paper of it come off of you.
On your fingers.
Open the ground.
Set it in.
Point up.
And pull the dirt over it.
Press it flat.
Your knees have been down in it the whole time.
Fold the bag.
It is empty now.
And it weighs about what one of them did.
Come up off your knees.
Now your own hands.
Take the temperature of the air on the backs of them.
The bed is behind you.
Flat and dark.
And there is nothing on it.
Open your eyes.
Your knees are cold.
