Poem-A-Day: Paw's Garden

Paw's Garden

The tommy-toe vines are taller than me,

                laden with gleaming red gems of bursting light.

Their delicate stems brush my cheek

                filling the summer air with the mineral scent of tomatoes in full bloom.

Red dirt sticks to my tennis shoes,

                the brown paper lunch sack crinkles in my hand

and bulges at the sides as I greedily throw more in.

Paw never makes me stop picking.

                If I fill up one sack he'll give me another one, but

it hardly seems necessary as I eat

                almost as many as I pick.

We move on to the cornfield,

                sweet-smelling, rustle-y, silk fronds wave gently in the afternoon

breeze--I don't like the corn.

It is too tall,

                Too secretive,

                               Too filled with bugs and worms lying in hidden places.

Our last stop is by the persimmon tree.

                We gaze into the branches where fat, shiny fruit hang

                                tantalizingly out of reach.

"Gimme one of those, Paw," five-year-old me demands.

He answers, says, "Sometimes we have to wait. They look ready now, but they will make you sick.

They are hard and bitter. They'll be sweet 

after the first frost comes."

Gazing in the mirror at my own reflection, 

                I hear the echoes of my grandfather's voice.

                               "Sometimes we have to wait."

I guess I never outgrew the tommy-toes: their openness, bright colors and giving abundance.

The corn is still too dark and secretive, but

I do love the persimmons. They are worth the wait.

My grandfather on my dad's side had the most beautiful garden. Some of my favorite memories of being at his house center around the garden, and especially, the tommy-toes (cherry tomatoes). The garden in the picture is mine. It is nowhere as large or as beautiful as my Paw's was, but I love it (and I do grow tommy-toes)! If there is one thing I realize as I get older, it's that there are a great many truths to be learned from a garden. It seems to me that Paw was teaching me one of those truths in this memory.