Almost every spring, I forget them,
the six packs of cosmos starts on the porch.
All it takes is one cold night,
an innocence of frost.
By dawn, the buds slightly droop.
By noon, the leaves hang darkened and limp.
By the next day, they’re black.
And dead.
It’s a familiar story. How one night
changes everything. How one day
I’m blooming, thriving, alive,
the next all I’d grown is gone.
I used to believe all was lost.
I used to throw the whole plant away.
But I learned what is dead serves as a blanket
to protect whatever still lives.
Wait, and in days, a tiny green filigree
emerges from the base.
In a month or two, it’s a bask of blooms,
no trace of how bleak it was.
Such tender study, the cosmos.
Blame is no part of their process.
They let what’s been lost be of service.
They know they are here to grow.
Posts Tagged ‘garden’
Again. Again.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cosmos, death, frost, garden, spring on May 25, 2021| 2 Comments »
Love, Like Mint
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, love, mint, mother, parenting on May 10, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Of course I knew the mint
would take over the pansy garden—
I planted it anyway.
Now the garden is overrun
with thick ropes of roots
and there’s mint in everything—
the garden, the lawn,
my hands. Even if I tried
to pull it all out, it would return
with its cool, bright scent of resilience.
It is, perhaps, similar to the way
a mother thinks she knows
just how deep the roots of love
will go. But I, I had no idea
how, despite drought, despite
poor soil, love’s runners
would spread through every
inch of my life, untameable,
and just when I might think it gone,
new sprouts erupt
fragrant and green,
sweet and fresh,
everywhere, everywhere.
I Don’t Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, not knowing, spring, surprise, words on May 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Today, I notice something green
spearing through the dirt
in the garden, and only
because there are eight such spears
rising in perfect rows do I vaguely remember
last year I planted bulbs there,
but I don’t remember what they are.
How much of the beauty we plant
do we forget?
There is so much in me that grows
because of words you have sown.
I doubt you remember them,
I don’t remember them, either,
only that your words were kind
and now they have taken root.
Who knows what the flowers
will look like? I water them, though,
trust I’ll be delighted when they bloom
into a garden of beautiful I don’t know.
Because Surrender to What Is Doesn’t Mean Do Nothing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged frost, garden, love, surrender on September 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Inside my heart is a gardener.
She knows eventually
all seeds planted in the heart
will die. That doesn’t stop her
from planting. And on a night
when she knows it will frost—
winter, after all, comes soon—
that doesn’t stop her
from rummaging around for blankets
to cover everything in bloom.
You could just let it go,
says some other inner voice.
Nothing lasts forever.
She pauses to listen.
Perhaps all she’ll get is one more week—
one more week of lush and unruly beauty,
one more week of riotous love.
It’s late and she’s tired.
She grabs another blanket.
Damn right, she’ll fight for it.
Finding Faith
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beets, faith, garden, truth on September 20, 2020| 8 Comments »
While pulling the beets,
it’s impossible to lose faith
in the world. Those tiny seeds
that once fit in the palm are now
large red globes,
dense with dark sweetness
and heavy in the hand.
They are like promises kept,
like small proofs in patience,
confirmations that sometimes
the good that’s growing can’t be seen.
They are like hard truths.
Not everyone will want them.
Some will.
Forecast
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, frost, garden, time on September 6, 2020| 8 Comments »
In two nights, the killing frost will come.
Because I know this, I wander the garden
and talk to the broccoli, the nasturtiums,
the cilantro. I thank the beets for their willingness
to grow. I tell the onions what is coming.
Tomorrow I will pick enormous bouquets
and fill the house with orange flowers.
Tomorrow I will sit in the garden
and try to store the beauty in my body
though I know it doesn’t work that way.
Please, just one more day, just one more month,
just one more life to try to get it right,
just one more chance to be as attentive
as I am when I know it is almost over,
the basil dark green, the marigolds crinkling with gold.
Bindweed in the Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bindweed, certainty, garden, stubbornness on July 25, 2020| 2 Comments »
All summer it’s been twisting and winding,
twining around sunflowers,
stretching across pathways,
climbing the pea vines and the tall wire fence.
If there is a fairy godmother of flowers,
she must have said to the bindweed,
“I bless you with tenacity.” And forever since,
it has lived up to her generosity.
Why do I curse it for its persistence,
when I, myself, have made a life out of stubbornness?
Oh foolish woman who longs for beauty,
but pulls the bindweed before it is beautiful,
before its pale pink flowers open to morning
delicate as certainty.
Another Reason to Be a Gardener
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, garden, letting go, practice on July 2, 2020| 7 Comments »
Though it’s July, the grass is iced
from last night’s frost, and the heart-shaped leaves
of the pole beans hang limp and dead.
And so the chance to practice letting go.
It’s too bad, of course,
but the stakes are low.
It was only one row,
a handful of seeds,
a hankering for fresh green beans.
Not a livelihood. Not a child.
Not a hope. Not a dream.
Just a small row of leaves
that do what leaves do.
No one to point a finger at.
No one to pick a fight with.
Just this practice of meeting
the world as it is. This chance to start again—
the work of the living.
Storage
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, song, sonnet on June 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »
I want to hear the green song in the veins of the leaves,
the dark song of soil as it warms in the midsummer sun.
I want to learn the low ballad of beets as they swell,
the racy soprano of strawberries flirty and sweet,
the slow bass of the lonesome potatoes as they fill out their lumps.
How have I not harmonized with the thrust of sunflowers?
How have I missed the chive chorus? The verses of nasturtium?
The chanting of onions as they steep in their own minor key?
If there is a garden holler known by the garlic,
world, teach it to me. I want to hear the carrots
as they reach trustingly down, down, down.
I want to carry those midsummer songs in my bones
so when winter comes, and I forget how things grow,
though it’s quiet and cold, I’ll remember, I’ll remember.
Walking in the Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, self, self worth on June 12, 2020| 14 Comments »
Every morning I walk into the garden,
even when there is little to see—only rows
of tiny sprouts and the earth just beginning to crack.
It is not so much that I speak to the seedlings,
though I do—to the slender green lashes
of carrots and the heart-shaped leaves of beans.
It is more that they speak to me in syllables
I feel through my fingers—speak of resilience
and tenderness, speak of the dark and beautiful
earth. There are so many days when I worry
that I am not doing enough—worry
that I could be more kind, more generous,
more loving, more vocal, more good.
But in the garden, pulling bindweed
and clover and salsify from the mostly empty rows,
all of my brokenness feels less broken.
It is somehow easier to forgive myself
for being who I am. And to mean it.
Easier to know myself as one of many.
Easier to believe that like the potato greens
I have so much more to offer that
can’t yet be seen, but it’s growing,
surely, deep in the darkness, it’s growing.
Dignity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dignity, garden, persistence, snapdragon on June 1, 2020| 2 Comments »
After the frost, the snapdragons remain standing.
They didn’t change colors the way the basil did.
Didn’t shrivel and flag like the beans.
They met the cold affront with beauty,
and a week later, they still stand, erect,
blossoms only slightly faded.
What an astonishing way
to meet an almost invincible force.
Even now, at the base of the lifeless stems,
tiny green leaves appear from the roots.
They insist, This isn’t over yet.
The Forecast Is for Freezing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, helping, husband, son on May 22, 2020| 6 Comments »
While I heat curried asparagus soup,
my husband and son cover garden beds
with thick gray blankets.
I watch them from the kitchen window,
my son now taller than his dad.
How quickly he bolted, bolts still.
I think of the ways
we try to protect what we grow.
The threat of frost is real.
Like the bean sprout that didn’t make it last night,
despite the fact we covered it.
This morning it was waxy, shriveled, dark.
How quickly it died.
But because my husband made row covers,
everything else survived.
I would like to make a row cover
for my son, for the world—something
to protect against what is harshest, most cold.
Instead, I mix lemon juice, yogurt
and chives that we’ll swirl into the soup.
I can fortify him on the inside.
My husband tacks down the cloths
with hammer and nails—I think
of all that will be saved tonight.
We are charged to take care
of each other, the world. Impossible charge.
My son catches my eye and smiles.
The Annual Mother’s Day Project
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, garden, growth, mother, mother's day on May 11, 2020| 4 Comments »
My daughter plants nasturtium seeds,
two per hole, four inches apart.
Meanwhile, two rows away, I drop carrot seeds
four to the inch, into the soft dark soil.
Oh, the secrets of dirt, this kingdom
of earth with its cool and damp quiet—
how quickly its finite borders pull me
into the infinite. What joy to travel here
with my girl, though she is a hesitant traveler.
One could say the main thing we did today
was measuring—how deep, how many seeds,
how far apart. Perhaps. When we finish, it will look
the same as when we began. But
I look at my daughter across the rows,
humming with her hands in the dirt
and I see already in her the fiery petals,
the peltate leaves like green flags
that know how to play with the wind.
After Reading the Headline About Rising Deaths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, Corona Virus, courage, garden, resilience, song on May 4, 2020| 3 Comments »
Today I take the courage I don’t feel
and the resilience I doubt and
all my unspent longing to serve,
and I bring them, cupped in my hands,
to the garden. They nestle there in my palms
like three baby birds that have not yet
opened their eyes. I take them to hear
the pungent song of the garlic shoots
and the thriving chives who chant
how to survive the winter.
I bring them to hear the strawberry leaves
who sing how to flourish despite the frost.
and the old song of chicken manure
and composted grass that hum about
how old life begets new life.
And they open their tiny beaks,
as if they could eat the green song.
How vulnerable they are.
So I open to the song, too.
I do what must be done.
I take in the nourishing song,
and feed them with my own mouth.
I Want to Live in That Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, potential, resilience on April 25, 2020| 5 Comments »
What if, tonight, we all went to bed
and thought of our best version of our self.
It wouldn’t be true, of course. Not
in this moment, and not tomorrow.
Not mid-week. Not next week.
Not even next year. But if we could picture it,
it would be a goal we could live toward.
It would be, perhaps, like the garden beds
I prepared today—hoeing in fertilizer,
last year’s grass clippings, leaves.
When I was done, the rows still looked like dirt,
but such fine dirt it was for planting.
I believe in our resilience.
What is best in us is eager to grow,
like the sunflower sprouts
volunteering again this year.
What if tonight, we imagined the roots
of our goodness. What if tonight,
we planted only those seeds.
A Lesson in Resilience
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chives, garden, resilience, self discovery on March 24, 2020| 2 Comments »
Today it is the chives that spur me,
seeing their slender green scapes and leaves
that have pushed up
through the dried clumps
of last year’s version of themselves.
When nothing else in the garden is green,
the chives grow, smooth, bendable, soft,
and yet they have managed to pierce
through the hard spring dirt.
Unwatered. Ignored.
In the aftermath of cold and dark,
they come. And something green in me responds,
pungent and powerful, eager. Ready
to flourish. Ready to meet the world,
though the cold is far from over.
What is it in us that longs to grow
through the previous, dried up versions of ourselves?
It rises, yes, like tiny spears, unstoppable,
bent on thriving, daring us to be
that resilient, that willing, that green.
Allium Sativum
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, garlic, love, patience, planting on February 14, 2020| 2 Comments »
When everything had died,
but before the ground was frozen,
I planted the garlic in four long rows—
dozens of cloves deep enough
in the earth so the frost
couldn’t push them up and out.
I think of them now as winter
continues to gather the world
in its white embrace.
I think of how, beneath the snow,
they’re preparing to flourish,
to root, to leaf, to grow.
It’s not so different, I think,
from the ways you love me—
how, sometimes, when everything
seems barren, you’ll plant seeds.
And though we see nothing for a long,
long time, there, like cloves beneath the surface,
each seed multiplies into many.
So much of love happens invisibly.
So much of love takes a stretch.
When the cloves ripen, some we will consume.
They will mark us with their strength.
Some, like love, we will plant again.
Big Eden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged community, garden, gardener on January 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »
As surely as I know how to spell harvest,
I understood today that no matter our job titles,
our work is gardener: always the same:
Plant the seeds. Tend what grows. Nourish.
Pinch back. Repeat. What a gift to see, at last,
the size of the garden. What a gift
to be in service to the world—to pull up
our sleeves, to smell the earth, to take
what we’ve been given and make it better,
to feed the others, to do it again.
The Truth
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flowers, garden, seeds, speaking, sunflower, truth on January 20, 2020| 2 Comments »
Inside the bright words
there are other words
that want to be said—
small words
in dark shells.
.
It reminds me
of the sunflowers
that grew in the fall—
how we loved them
for their golden petals,
but they were true
to the small dark seeds
that grew them,
to the small dark seeds
they grew.