Parting Poems from Cary Oshins

As announced at COMPOST2023, Cary Oshins will be retiring from his long career at the US Composting Council and the Compost Research and Education Foundation. Cary has requested that the following two poems be shared with the membership in his final month of work at the USCC...
 
To Be Of Use
By Marge Piercy
Excepted from Piercy, Marge (1990) Circles on the Water, New York, Alfred A. Knopf
 
The people l love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
 
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward
who do what has to be done, again and again.
 
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
 
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
 
Lee’s Living Will
Preamble: Lee Hayes (of the Weavers) wrote a note to Tori Seeger, Pete Seeger’s wife, with whom he shared a great love of gardening: "I don’t know where the poop these ideas come from.  The older I get, the more interesting my mind seems to be.  I don’t agree with it always, but it gets more interesting.

If I should die before I wake
All my bone and sinew take
Put me in the compost pile
To decompose me for a while
 
Worms, water, sun will have their way
Returning me to common clay
All that I am will feed the trees
The plants, the fishes and the seas
 
When radishes and corn you munch
You’ll be having me for lunch
And then excrete me with a grin
Chortling "There goes Lee again!”