Vox Populi
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Barbara Crooker: Credo
It’s early summer, everything running to green,
and the sun has dipped its brush in gilt: coreopsis,
black-eyed Susans, Stella d’Oro lilies. At night,
the cool moon throws a silver net over
the darkened yard. You can till the earth,
hoe the rows, but each seed is an act of belief
that somehow in the dark something
is happening: seeds splitting their husks,
softened by rain and spray from the hose,
then sending up pale shoots, periscopes
searching for light. Two leaves, four leaves,
and suddenly: a vine. Which has a mind
of its own, trellising up the tomatoes,
smothering the beans. Remove the coils
used for a foothold, place it in the space
between rows, so it can grow longer, greener
every day. Nobody ever sees this happen;
we take it on faith. Next come little lemon stars,
then small green globes, which swell, fill,
fueled by the sun. The calendar turns to August,
days ripen, each one more golden than the next.
Nothing the gardener does can make this happen.
One morning, when the leaves are slick with dew,
you go out to check and realize every rib
is yellow, the netting is even, webbed with gold,
and that which has held fast throughout this long
season is ready to slip, fill your hands with its heft,
fill your bowl with roundness, and soon, nestled
in the boat of your spoon, the sun’s longing
exploding on your tongue.
~
~~~~
Copyright 2024 Barbara Crooker. From Slow Wreckage (Grayson Books, 2024)
Barbara Crooker is author of ten full-length books of poetry, including Some Glad Morning, Pitt Poetry Series, longlisted for the Julie Suk award from Jacar Press, The Book of Kells, which won the Best Poetry Book of 2019 Award from Poetry by the Sea, and Slow Wreckage (Grayson Books, 2024). Her other awards include: Grammy Spoken Word Finalist, the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, others.
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The imagery in this gorgeous garden poem! Love!
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Some days, a flower bloom or a taste of spinach or collards from my garden or the only things that can elicit a smile and glimmer of hope from me.
Thanks
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Thank you, Leo.
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Thanks for this sunlight. Difficult as it is to see the hope at the moment, this tangible beauty blooms with possibility.
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Thank you, Clayton.
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This is such a beauty! And “the sun’s longing
exploding on your tongue” is an exquisite ending.
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Yes, I love Barbara’s poems. She makes writing great poems look easy.
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Thanks, Meg! I love your work, too–
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What an ode to patience, hope, strangeness, nature, the sun and the million miracles a small garden offers, right there, to you, to us experienced gardeners or not (like me!), e-v-e-r-y single spring! What a golden poem!
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Thanks, Laure-Anne. Now I’m in an apartment, so this poem is an artifact of my former life. . . .
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Yes, this poem both makes the garden strange with wonders, the plants growing “periscopes” to find the light, the vine’s “coils used for a foothold,” and so much more. And it grows beyond us, we work but can’t make it happen, and suddenly, there is gold everywhere. What a wonderful poem of hope.
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I love Barbara’s clarity of language as she creates emotional conflicts.
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Thanks, Mary. It’s hard to be hopeful right now, so we have to look for it where we can. . . .
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It looks like only some squash family plants and a couple reseeded carrots have arrived and flourished under the netting. I love the rabbits and squirrels so how can I get angry at them? I suspect the crows harvest also. Once watched one fly away with a soy bean plant. Yet I check every morning and wonder at those unidentified vines and the large apricot tree growing in a raised bed from my carelessness with the compost.
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Every year we get a couple of thick vines of squash coming from our compost. They produce lovely fruit.
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Thanks so much, Mary. I think gardening itself is an act of hope–
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Or sometimes it reverts back to being a gourd or some sort. But they’re cool, too–
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Last year we had butternut squash in the compost pile; this year it is zucchini!
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It seems that varieties of squash are the most common volunteers to grow from compost. I wonder if they have particularly hardy seeds.
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I love this celebration of plant intelligence, and the gifts it bestows on us, if we are patient.
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Yes, patience.
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Which is a virtue. . . .
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