They, too, once had gardens filled
with succulent dark leaves and firm
swollen roots they planted to feed
their family, their community, themselves.
They, too, would walk the rows and tug
at weeds and make small, quirky bouquets
to take to the graves of their loved ones.
I don’t know why their gardens are gone now.
Perhaps covered in ash from wildfire.
Perhaps bombed out and torn up by war.
Perhaps transformed to dust by drought.
Or perhaps they are simply too old now
to pick up the trowel, the shovel,
the hoe. But the women remember
how they marveled at the pea vines climbing
the fence to produce a profusion of sweet
green pods dangling on the wire.
I long to feed them from these beds,
if not the food itself, feed them at least the ongoing
dream of garden, as someday I, too,
will be offered the dream through the hands
and thoughts of another woman who finds herself
standing in the midst of abundance longing
to share it with all the women who can’t
find their way into the garden today.
Not knowing how to bless them, I bless them anyway
as I have been blessed, and I transplant calendula,
deadhead the cosmos, harvest
heads of garlic, brush the loose dirt away.
Posts Tagged ‘gardening’
The Unknown Women
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged abundance, blessing, gardening, women on July 1, 2026| 2 Comments »
Ode to Digging Potatoes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dirt, earth, gardening, grief, harvesting, potatoes, soil on September 27, 2024| 11 Comments »
Go play in the dirt, she said,
and tonight, though I call it
harvesting potatoes,
what I’m really doing
is “playing in the dirt,”
the quickest way I know
to recalibrate the soul.
The potatoes are a bonus, really,
though I say they are why I am here.
Each firm, red-skinned round
I pull from the earth is a small proof
of how things can grow in the dark—
the way a woman, too,
can grow in conditions
when she forgets for a time
there is light.
I sift the cool soil through my fingers
as I pull my hands through the bed,
and I fall in love with this substance
made richer by what is dead,
this basis of all that lives,
this home for the kind of treasure
I honor now more than ever,
the kind that needs darkness and time.
In the Second Week of the New Year
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, healing, planting, winter on January 18, 2023| 8 Comments »
Outside it’s a blizzard,
Inside, I plant seeds
for six heads of lettuce.
I plant cherry tomatoes, yellow,
and tiny seeds of basil.
I plug in the grow lights,
add water, wait.
I’m well aware
how much growth can happen
in the most unfavorable seasons,
how sometimes when the world
feels cruel, we might yet be met
with light, warmth, care.
It brings me real joy
to plant these seeds today
while outside the wind
and snow and cold
do their wintery work.
In a week, there will be sprouts.
In a month, there will be greens.
Though they will be bitter,
they’ll be tender.
I will savor them.
I will share.
Allium
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged becoming, gardening, onion, patience on April 25, 2021| 2 Comments »
While I did not fix
the thing I most
wish to fix, and I
did not do
the most important
thing on my list,
and I did not save
anyone, and I did
not solve the world’s
problems, I did
plant the onion sets
in the garden,
pressed my fingers
into the dry earth,
knew myself as
a thin dry start.
Oh patience, good
self. This slow
and quiet growing,
this, too, is
what you are
here to do.
published in ONE ART: A journal of poetry
End of Season
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged broccoli, gardening, growth, patience, poem, poetry, ripening, self talk on October 18, 2019| 2 Comments »
The broccoli was a disappointment this year—
planted from seed, it had finally begun to sport
small knobby green heads when the frost came.
And though the broccoli didn’t die, it stalled.
Perhaps I fear I am like this broccoli—destined
to grow but never to fruit. Perhaps this is why
I feel such urgency, this need to write faster,
heal quicker, mature sooner, love more. Because
what if the freeze comes? What if I die before
doing what I have come here to do?
There is a part of me who is patient. A part of me
who says, Sweet One, you could not possibly be
any more you than you are right now. She tells me,
You are exactly enough. And sometimes I believe her.
But sometimes I roll my eyes at her and tell myself,
Hurry up, hurry up. I know myself as barren stalk.
I try to will my own ripening. Not once has it worked,
not once, and still this strange drive:
go faster, do it better, do it now.
Communion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, poem, poetry, potatoes, self love on September 10, 2019| 3 Comments »
At midday, I dug beneath damp straw
and gently ran my fingers through dirt,
and, there, in the kingdom of earth worms,
found dozens of beautiful ruby-skinned potatoes,
each one of them precious in my hands.
God knows I have longed to be found this way—
pulled out from my darkness and cradled,
held up to the light with an oooh and an ahh
and a laugh of joy, though I’m slightly misshapen,
though I’m bumpy and imperfect.
There are days when I see through it so easily,
the longing to be loved, and I simply feel the love
that always exists, the love that grows in darkness,
that is utterly unconcerned with worthiness,
that feels no need for discovery.
There are moments when I can’t imagine
I ever thought I was lost, like today,
kneeling in the dirt, marveling at the beauty
of potatoes, mud-smudged and lumpy,
knowing myself as another who belongs to the earth.
Letting It Be
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, fixing, gardening, poem, poetry on August 26, 2019| 4 Comments »
There is a carpenter in me
with an impressive tool belt.
She thinks she can fix everything.
Every time there’s a leak in the ducts,
she blames that darn condensation,
and whips out her metallic tape.
And when there’s a heart break,
she mumbles something about not meeting code,
then takes note of all the cracks,
all the places where it’s falling apart,
and gets to work: cleans up and preps
new concrete to hold things together.
I know she’s doing what she knows best,
I know she has good intentions.
But today, while she runs off to seek
just the right hammer, just the right nails,
I take those leaky ducts and that broken heart
into the garden and dig potatoes.
The soil is cool and slips soft
though my fingers as I sift for yellow fingerlings
and red-skinned Desirees.
There is a gardener in me who doesn’t try
to fix anything. She says in a quiet southern drawl,
Sweet thing, bring all that brokenness here
and let it walk amongst the sunflowers.
Let it weed the carrots and pick
some calendula bouquets. And nothing
gets fixed, but something shifts as I sit
beside unruly mint, its green spears rampant,
its scent so cooling, so sweet.
The Gardener Starts Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, patience, poem, poetry, work on June 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Push again the small dried peas
one inch into the earth. The gaps
in the rows where they did not grow,
do not take these personally.
Not everything comes to fruition,
but that is no reason to stop planting.
In fact there is every reason to believe
that not so long from now
the sweet green song of fresh sweet peas
will serenade your impatient tongue
if only your hands keep doing their work.
The Anti-Resume
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dead heading, gardening, poem, poetry, success on June 4, 2017| Leave a Comment »
I snip off dead flowers
to trick the pansy
into blooming again
wonder which
of my past
blossoms
to cut
Like Forgiveness, Like Happiness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, gardening, happiness, poem, poetry on May 31, 2017| Leave a Comment »
After the frost,
the sweet peas
rise from the dirt
like little green angels
with bowed heads
and tiny green wings—
it’s enough to make
a woman believe
small miracles can happen
if only she plants
the seed.
One Nod to Anarchy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anarchy, gardening, poem, poetry on May 29, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Alone in the Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awakening, gardening, poem, poetry, silence on May 14, 2017| 2 Comments »
Digging there in the dirt
with small seeds
in your hands
you hear the wind
high in the cottonwoods,
you hear the silence
sown inside the wind,
and the quieter
you are, you hear
perhaps, within you
a call like the geese
that aren’t flying
overhead, a startling
call, an almost
strangled sound
that, if you heard it,
might almost
wake you up.
Transplant
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, poem, poetry, reslilience, sunflower on July 27, 2015| 1 Comment »
Those forlorn, sagging sunflowers,
all morning I watch the severe arcs
of their lifeless stems. Just yesterday,
they were so full of vigor before I pulled them up
and moved them across the garden.
I, too, have been ripped up. Is this why
I can’t stop staring at them all morning
at the slow, slow straightening,
the gradual unflagging of the leaves,
the marvelous resilience
I want to believe I might find inside me
no matter how brutal or well intentioned
the hand that tugs, tugs at my roots.
Pay Attention, Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cosmos, gardening, poem, poetry, story on October 3, 2014| 2 Comments »
After the frost, the cosmos fronds
are brittle and brown. Not a hint
of return. Not a trace of pink. Brown.
Partially dust already. Sometimes it needs
to be this way in order for us to do
the work that must be done—the pulling
up of things by the roots and discarding
them into a pile. No, if there were any green chance
that the cosmos might bloom again,
it would be easier to tell the self a story
about how, with some luck and some care,
the plant might leap back to life.
But the story is a trick ladder,
every rung is covered in oil and even
if you reach the top it leads to nowhere.
Look. The flowers are dead. They were lovely once.
Say thank you. And give the stem a tug.
In the Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, green beans, poem, poetry, slow food on August 29, 2014| 1 Comment »
What a gift
to kneel
in the dirt
and search
beneath
the heart-shaped leaves
for the long
and slender green
of beans,
marveling
at how straight
they are, how
green, marveling
as if
the way
they grow
could not only
feed us
but save us.
Late June in the San Juans
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, midsummer, mountains, poem, poetry on June 21, 2014| 1 Comment »
Just because it’s the longest day of the year
doesn’t mean that the bean sprouts in the garden
won’t freeze tonight. Again. As they did last night.
And two nights before that. So I water them.
I water them real good, for I am still shocked
and delighted that the process of freezing creates
a degree of heat. Every time I consider that fact,
it stuns me. It’s like a joke that makes me laugh
no matter how many times I have heard it.
And though it’s all rather predictable amongst the rows,
what comes up when and what the frost will kill,
it is always new. I never stop marveling at the pure
determination of those tiny leaves as they thrust
through the hard dirt crust. And marvel again at their
vulnerability on nights like tonight when the wind
gets lost some other where and the stars shine clear
in the cold night air and the frost doesn’t care
if I’ve planted the beans again. And again. The earth
spins on its invisible spit and summer goes on
as it always does, different than it’s ever been.
On the Other Side of the Fence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, love, poem, poetry on August 4, 2013| 3 Comments »
On the Other Side of the Fence
A low fence lined
with wild roses.
Two white chairs
and a round white table.
Scent of a recent
afternoon rain.
Beet greens proud,
crimson veined and tall
and the gooseberries swollen
nearly red.
In this small garden
everything tended.
In me a longing
to love you like that.
Wouldn’t It Be Funny
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brokenness, children, gardening, mothering, poem, poetry, wholeness on May 29, 2013| 2 Comments »
It is hard to not resent the ants
and grasshoppers, even though
they are doing the only thing
their bodies know how to do—
to eat what is green as they find it.
They do not know that these greens
are the first pea shoots, that if only
they waited another week or two
there would be thousands more leaves
for the eating and still enough left
for the peas to mature.
But no, they take the first green,
and now in the row against the fence
there are long stretches of nothing
but broken stems and empty earth.
Just today my son asked me
what a mosaic was, and I told him
it was the act of making art
out of broken bits of things.
Wouldn’t it be funny, he said,
if the whole world broke and
we made a mosaic from what was left.
My whole life I have clung
to some idea that the world
could be more whole than it is,
and then today, a twist.
I’m not saying I don’t resent
the ants, the grasshoppers
and their wake of fruitlessness.
I’m just seeing that everything’s broken.
And then there’s the art of the mess.
Who is Telling the Story
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, hero, mother, narrator, poem, poetry, satsang, son on May 12, 2013| 8 Comments »
While digging
in the garden rows,
my son looks up
from his work
of ripping apart a clump
of roots and says to me,
Mom, how could
anything ever go wrong
with this day,
and I think,
my darling,
you teach me
so beautifully.
There are days
we forget that life
will unfold for us
if we let it.
It’s not that nothing
could go wrong.
Of course it will.
But if we are not
the heroes of our
days, rather the narrators
who notice and relate
all the events,
whether cheerful or tragic,
with equal interest,
well then even
the wrong things
are right. As it is,
he does not step
barefoot on the hoe
with its spikes
turned up nor do I
hobble to the house
with a back too sore
to stand. And the day
unfolds as some days
do, with nearly nothing
to report except the
weather—warm,
some clouds, the sun
still gaining—and
a mother and son
got the planting done.
Nothing to show for it yet
except the smile on my face
and the dirt still under
his fingernails. But I have
to admit I am glad there was
nothing painful or difficult.
And on this day, my son
is the hero of the poem.
And I can watch his mother
typing out her joy as if
I am not the same woman.
Between these two view points,
there is a garden. I walk
its rows. I bring it water.
What grows is what will grow.
The Gardener Goes to the Carnival Haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged carnival, gardening, haiku, nostalgia, poem on June 22, 2012| 3 Comments »
spinning on the tilt-a-whirl
scent of tomato leaves
still on my hands