I hope this post finds you well, perhaps snuggled up at home reading or reaching out to a friend. As we navigate this new era of social distancing, I hope you can find time to get close to nature. Spring is coming in all of its glory to our doorsteps. The daffodils are blooming and farmers are putting early seeds into the ground. So during this time when anxiety runs high, I invite you to notice. Call your senses to the moment. Feel your heart rate slow down. As the poet Mary Oliver says, “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” It is in this spirit that I share a poem — a meditation on one of spring’s many gifts.
Asparagus
You’ve been calling to me all day
from the fridge.
Your green beauty
pulling me out of another
9 to 5 trance.
Wrapped in linen,
your slender bodies sing me
into spring.
Like a girl of 6, just out
of the shower,
all lithe and bright-eyed,
humming
while she spins into a towel and her
mother’s arms.
Your name does you no justice,
gives no notion of how you
burst from the ground.
Tiny trees.
Stalks offering
themselves to the hungry
college student who wants to know
how things grow.
Your generosity amazed me
that summer.
Your perennial provision.
I would like to model
myself off of you,
tall and simple,
delicious with butter,
gift that keeps giving.
Molly Sowash is a national service AmeriCorps member with Rural Action‘s Sustainable Agriculture team. You’ll find her at the Chesterhill Produce Auction loading produce, checking customers out, or making friends with the livestock. She studied Creative Writing at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN and lived in Minneapolis for three years before returning to her roots in Ohio.
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