June 2, 2020

the radish grower
dedicated to George Floyd

At the outset, errors are made, holes dug too deep, or not deep enough. There is that tepid
track record behind her, each attempt yielding such anemic harvests she could still be
plagued, these years later, by a long narrative of vegetal failure. And yet, the soil beckons
again, its plump, scuttly creatures always too busy to judge, and when the weather turns, 
as it willfully does, she tiptoes back to that loamy intersection where uncertainty
perennially meets hope, and for a tiny, luminous moment, imagines herself to be 
a grower of radishes. It is this thought that moves her hands toward the dirt, that makes
the necessary entry to begin, that marries her to the seeds she nests like baby birds 
in her warm palms. Now it’s almost summer and she returns to stand quietly by the rows,
whispering “Tell me what you need” and bending close as her body will go to listen.