I know they will die,
the dahlias, the zinnias,
the petunias, the geraniums,
will die come autumn,
and still I buy them, still
plant them and sing to them
as I do. Looking up
from the garden beds, trowel
in hand, I see it in everything—
the spruce, the ants, the swallows,
this hand—all that lives will die.
And staring at the basil, pungent
and green and ephemeral, I feel
so darn lucky to unfold
for whatever time I am given.
To bloom while I can. To be marigold.
Calendula. Mother. Begonia. Gratefulness
floods me like low summer sun.
I turn my face toward that light.
Posts Tagged ‘garden’
Annual
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged annual, flower, garden, gratefulness, mortality on May 31, 2025| 8 Comments »
It’s the Forgettable Moments I Miss
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cars, conversation, garden, grief, ordinary on October 22, 2024| 10 Comments »
I want to be in the garden
with you again,
hands in the dirt,
maybe listening
to cottonwood leaves
spreading rumors
of fall, but maybe
not even listening.
I want a moment
so mundane, just
pulling bindweed,
nodding and humming absently
as you talk about race cars,
a moment so unmemorable
I forget how damn precious
every single moment is;
I want a moment I take
for granted, want to
be bored or even fussy
standing beside you,
the beets too small
to harvest, your voice
rambling on about pole positions
and pit stop strategies,
and me utterly clueless
I would ever look back
and long to hear you
wax on about balancing fuel loads,
worn tires, soft compounds,
anything, anything at all.
In the Garden in October
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, gratefulness, snap pea, tenderness on October 14, 2024| 8 Comments »
Though the vines are almost all brittle and dried,
somehow I find four perfect sugar snap peas
at the top of the fence. Not tough. Not pale
with age, but sweet and crisp and stringless,
and I pull them into my mouth with delight
as if I am eating the word yes. Aren’t they amazing?
I say, holding the last snap pea up to the sunflowers
where they hang heavy and dead on their stalks.
I want to offer this pea to the world like a small proof
of pleasure—some evidence that life persists
despite cold, despite exhaustion,
though the light itself seems to be failing,
but here, look in my hand, this testament to tenderness
so full of spring, so unfathomable, so here.
On This Day Twenty Years After You Were Born
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birth, garden, grief, language, silence on September 12, 2024| 15 Comments »
I dug in the garden. For hours.
Hands deep in the dirt
where once your hands
dug, too. Pulled carrots.
Potatoes. Onions.
Held them up to the air
and marveled at what grows
in the dark. Asked you questions.
As always, you didn’t answer.
Or perhaps it’s truer to say
I do not know how
to interpret the language
of rain, the message
of the white seed that landed
in my hand, the significance
of the hummingbird moth
drinking from bright red nasturtiums.
But I am learning the language of silence.
Same language the earth speaks.
Same language we spoke while you
were still forming inside me. Such
an intimate tongue. Such generous
conversation. All day I practice
speaking it with you. All day
I practice listening.
What the Gardener Knows
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cantaloupe, garden, love, melon, opening on September 5, 2024| 7 Comments »
When I say I love you wholehearted,
I mean the whole cantaloupe, sweetheart.
I mean the strange webby skin and
the sweet, firm flesh and the absolutely
freaking messy center. I mean the way
we have to wait so patiently until it’s ripe.
The way I can smell it across the room.
The way it bruises so easily.
I mean I am speaking of love. I mean
I am well aware there’s no word in the world
as delicious as the sticky juice as it dribbles down
the chin. I mean I understand the potential disaster
in underestimating the need for warmth,
how quickly a frost can end it all.
I mean this is no kohlrabi love, sweetheart,
but I don’t know if you’re the melon
or I’m the melon or we both are, I just know
there’s no way to know what we’ve got
until we both split open and break so
completely there’s no knowing which
goop is mine and which is yours
and this is the way we survive—
not by staying whole, but by opening
wide and giving it all away.
Paradise
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, paradise, paradox, pleasure on August 21, 2024| 9 Comments »
after “Pleasure” by Rick Barot
It was a garden, they said,
with an apple tree and one
man and one woman,
always blissful.
And while I don’t doubt
this, too, is paradise,
I know well the paradise
when one woman is alone
in the garden pulling up
bindweed by the roots,
knowing she’ll never get it all.
And somehow there is pleasure
in the endless pulling.
I know the paradise
when fifty-thousand people
sing together a song
about heartbreak.
And the paradise of a lover’s
arms when I’m weeping
is somehow even more paradisical
than when the world feels easy.
I’m not saying I want
things to go wrong.
I, too, pray for peace.
But I know now that pain
does not preclude paradise.
The bruised apple
makes a sweet sauce.
The arm that aches
still holds the beloved child.
And after a fire,
the world grows back
with such startling green.
Looking at the Bouquet on My Counter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, flower, garden on August 19, 2024| 4 Comments »
Like tiny, earthbound fireworks
that flourish in my garden,
the flowers of wild bergamot
flare purple, their slender petals
curl back, and I am reminded
how small it can be, our chance
to blaze, to be beautiful, to spread
our sweet perfume, and still make—
at least in one life—a real difference.
Allium sativum
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, garlic, growth, heart on August 8, 2024| 8 Comments »
Not unlike the garlic
bulbs pulled today
from garden soil,
the heart, too,
is lumpy, misshapen,
filled with strong
and good intentions.
Never quite what
I dream—but hey,
it’s not nothing
to grow where
there is no light.
It’s not nothing
to grow at all.
Poem Not Really About Spinach
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, garden, second chance, spinach, summer, time, too late, waiting on August 1, 2024| 2 Comments »
Already bolted and wilting
in the heat, the spinach
is past prime and yet
on this first day of August
I’m able to pull two pounds
of triangular leaves
into my bowl, enough
for a generous pan
of creamy saag paneer.
Sometimes it’s not
too late. Sometimes
the world waits for us.
Sure, the stakes are low tonight,
but sometimes we get a glimpse
that things we thought
were lost are not lost
at all, not yet—just taste
that bright and earthy
green, so full of comfort,
so humble, so good.
Let Us Gather in the Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, community, food, garden, gathering on July 25, 2024| 6 Comments »
Let us gather in the garden in late July
when the snap peas are fat and sweet on the vines
and the tiny white cilantro flowers charge
the air with fragrant green. When the sunflowers
have not yet opened, but the cosmos are already
a riot of pinks and white and the nasturtiums
have erupted into spicy orange petals
and the heads of lettuce open and open
as if looking for the edges of the universe.
Let us gather when the onions are beginning
to swell and the kale leaves are big as elephant ears
and the basil is lush and vigorous and flourishing
and it’s so good to be here with our hunger,
not to consume but to be opened by goodness,
to know ourselves as part of this generous
plentiful land. It so good to be here
together amongst the ripening,
to share the living blessing, to welcome
each other into the garden of our hearts,
to nourish the seeds of all that is to come
forming even now inside our open hands.