Recently, I wrote about the sublime pleasures of eating locally-grown (in my case, hyperlocally-grown) asparagus and how it evokes memories of my Iowa childhood. I keep a reminder of this personal history close, even when it’s not asparagus season, through a poem I happened across several years ago by Madison-based poet Alison Townsend.

Yesterday, Townsend graciously said I could share the poem with Greengirls readers. A gardener herself, she said she drafted the poem while actually steaming asparagus. Many thanks to her for her generosity!

Asparagus Season

first green it is always
the kitchen
bright stalk in the middle of
so much wanting
I do not know
when it starts
but it does
start
tender as
buds
pushing the dark earth
of my childhood
a door that swings
backward and forward
and always
my grandmother
her farm
and her full hands
those large baskets of giving

^

she offers shoots
furled spears
tentative as
the shape of my own legs
on the white
path of her garden she
sings of spring
life breaking the crust
of the black earth
cracking the deep
mounds of our silence

^

believing it all
I cook asparagus
brief in its season
it is the briefest
but fierce as
lit candles
or the promise of rain
in each forkfull
I lift
rain
and the shape of this wanting
that is so green into
a beginning
a garden
an open mouth

(originally published by Blackbird Press and Poets On)

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 10th, 2007 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Asparagus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.