I awake to the word “layering” and think of compost made from gathering organic ingredients and layering them until they come together to make a nutrient-rich mulch for the garden.

We do the same when someone dies – come together – layer various people known in different ways – we layer and compost levels and layers of grief until one day there is a little more life and ability to raise our heads from the ground and look around.

Oh, what a beautiful world it is today.

I woke this morning thinking of Stanley Kunitz’s poem “The Layers”.  He was a gardener and a poet, and perhaps the two are twined.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.