Soilent…Brown

You think me mad,
my pagan ways
because I love the dirt.

The dark soil
made from every ending,
leaf and feather,
fur and bone,
all the quiet things
that fell apart
and became again.

You think me mad
because I press my hands
into damp earth,
feel the black loam crumble
between my fingers,
working beneath my nails
until the forest smell
follows me home.

You think me mad
because I listen
to my ancestral calling.

Because I kneel in the moss
and wait for the slow struggle
of green things rising,
twisting, stretching,
pushing blind through darkness
in search of light.

You think me mad
because I want to lie down
in the peat and roots,
to be planted among the trees,
to send my hunger downward
into the cool deep places
where life feeds on life
without apology.

You think me mad
because I would march with the ants,
carry the fallen,
help build their quiet cities
from the bodies of the dead.

Because I do not crave
your ladders of power,
your endless scrambling
for a throne that feeds no one.

You call it madness
to refuse your game.

I think I am the honest one.

You are the frantic creature
running circles in a narrow cage,
scratching for power
that slips through your fingers
the moment the grave closes.

But tell me this.

When the soil closes over you,
when the dark presses in
and the slow roots begin their work,

when the forest drinks
what remains of your striving,

and the trees grow tall
on what you once were,

who was mad?

The one who feared the earth,

or the one
who understood
they were always meant
to become it.

By Heather Patton/Verdant Butterfly

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© 2026 Heather Patton · The Verdant Butterfly
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