February 11, 2025

poem in which I choose a bundle of kale next to a stranger

I’ve just come from Cynthia’s memorial. We need more peanut butter,
that cereal that tastes of turmeric, sliced sourdough. But the first
displays past the automatic doors are pyramids of produce, the windfall
of hothouses everywhere, and despite the pileup of dirty snow outside,
I advance as if on tiptoe, making my slow way through. Everything
looks holy, blessed by the hands that reached into the dirt and pulled.
On a back shelf, misters have come on beckoningly. Their target:
anything cruciferous. My basket is empty, a hand wadded around
the handle. I have lost the thread of what I am supposed to do in times
like these, though there have not been, in my lifetime, times like these.

Today’s shoppers have fanned out—skin care, coffee, bulk foods, frozen
pizza. The checkout lanes are already full. There is the tug of urgency
like a riptide. The rapid beeps of registers sound like heart monitors
right before someone presses the call button. But ahead of me,
a density of leaves bearing the sheen of patience. Or maybe it’s simply
tenderness. Either way, I want more of it. I am greedy now. Even if
everything I have could be crushed to dust, disappeared. Here
is the buoy. Here is the thing that gets me out. The deep blush
of want. Beads of oxygen. My own disobedient hands.
Everything green that remains, alive and shimmering.