A Sunday Afternoon Poem

Ode To An April Sunburn

Today
while pressing white onion sets
between the black folds of earth
I bend at the middle
upside down
(the gardener is forever upside down)
stooped, crouched, snapped
into segments like a new green bean

During the act
the contortionist forgets all discomfort
A gardener does not think of her knees
while she presses blue-budded-bodies
of potatoes into the skin of soil

Soil give up each warm breath
unfolding one warm day into another
Soil encases the fragile roots
while one white stalk after another
rises
unfurls
and then GREEN arrives
like a slender cat at the window ledge
Gentle claws
new leaves
wanting to come in
Don't we all want to come in?
The sun comes in
slowly over the course of the day
piercing soil, seed, and skin alike
Unsuspecting
I am burned by the persistent gentleness of it

~ Katrina Nevin