Boundary Layer (Mulch, Humus)‪.‬

KEM LUTHER teaches at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario. He is the author of Cottonwood Roots (University of Nebraska Press, 1993). I decided to hide from my taskmasters today and take a play day. I wanted to do something I had not done for a long time - I wanted to spend the day on the ground. I was thinking of childhood afternoons when I would splay out on the earth, watching a world unfold in the grass. Of the approximately 26,000 days allotted to our kind, we probably have, on the average, fewer than a thousand that are play days, days in which we are free to choose after we wake up what we would like to do. Most of these occur before we are twelve, and after we are sixty. Between twelve and sixty life tends to be a soul-shattering succession of duties, appointments, and schedules.