Green-Thumb

Oct 20 2013

There must be a word

in every language

for green-thumb.

It will do with the virtue

of manual labour, the human hand.

The resistance of fertile earth

in its certain grasp,

the feel of sun-warmed soil

oozing out.

She hugs trees, talks to plants.

Runs a leaf

between finger and thumb,

like a seamstress

examining fabric

for tiny flaws.

Stops to feel the sun, looking up,

skin aged

to a kind of bark,

as dark and intricate

as rich mahogany.

And her arms, sinewed and veined

are thin, but strong,

like the tough green vines

that climb her trellises.

Her touch seems capable

of giving life,

but gently

and fully expecting

that nothing might come of it,

resigned

to the vagaries of weather

infestation

rot.

But invariably

her garden flourishes, no matter what.

This is clearly an act of love

as willingly received, as given.

She shares her harvest freely,

pulling living things

against well-rooted resistance.

So fresh

bits of soil loosely cling,

like beautifully set jewels

rich black

on luminous green.

I brush them off

and eat.

I know part of it came from raiding (with permission!) Connie Latimer's vegetable garden (my neighbour) for some fresh organic kale. Or was it from just reading about the remarkable botanist Diana Beresford-Kroger in Friday’s Globe and Mail?

“Manual” is derived from the Latin root for “hand”:  as in mano a mano and manipulate. So I quite like the movement from manual labour to the hand imagery.

I think the unnamed subject had to be a “she”, with its connotation of nurturing and maternal care.

The frustrating thing about green-thumbs – for those of us who aren’t – is that the garden invariably does flourish. They are like horse whisperers and mystics:  somehow attached to the great and mysterious forces that elude everyone else.

Connie’s kale was  indeed dotted with bits of soil. (Woops, I almost wrote “dirt”; which I now know is anathema to horticulturalists!) And there is the very real sense, pulling something fresh, that it is still alive. Which is true:  the cells don’t die instantly; and attached to its roots, the organism will continue to function.

I was going to end it “I brush them off/ and gratefully eat.” I do like getting the idea of gratitude in there. But in the end I decided to go with the simpler “eat”.  First, because I like to avoid adverbs. And second, because I like the punchiness of the short version:  after all that verbiage and over-thinking, it’s as if the writer’s full concentration is now free to focus on this one all-consuming activity, making it the perfect time to turn the poem off. And anyway, the transport and absorption of this singular act is itself an implicit expression of gratitude.