It should come as no surprise
that your name, at root,
means root, you radical sprout
with your leafy snoot
and trailing rat-tail reach.
Dependable, you do
just what the packet
says you’ll do: run
seed to fruit
in under a month
while the rest of the garden
warms its bones
in the cold porridge light
of March. Staunch.
You never miss a day.
Cooped up all winter
with catalogs
of heirloom seeds
for sale, we want
neon, technicolor,
five-dimensional hues;
we want the architecture
of a garden in full bloom:
trellises bunting-ed with sugar snaps,
swept streets between carrot rows,
the strawberry’s incessant
urban sprawl; those
squat cathedrals –
the beefsteak tomatoes –
with heft and somber grace.
But it’s bare soil we get
in the garden plot.
We rootle about, with
bulbs and trowel,
trying to remember
the dance we do
with frost and rabbits
each spring. It’s all
in the timing, you grin,
your chapped-red mouth
working its way up
through the ice and slush
to speak to us
in that old man’s
throaty croak. We kneel,
closer now, ear to soil,
Come again? we say.
