catapult magazine

To My Father who Grew Asparagus

by Brianne Donaldson

It goes on, doesn’t it
This day of April?
The compost pile needing
To be turned
And spread
Over the tilled rows

Asparagus waiting to emerge
After we shook its seed loose
from old film canisters.

It’ll probably take three years until
We’d get a single spear
He said.

The roots have to reach
Horizontal through the sand
until they run together
in a tangled mat.

Covered with orange rinds
And egg shells
And the leaves of last autumn,
Teaching me to tend the ground
As he did friendships
frankness
and a collection of dirty jokes.

You’ve got to finish what you start,
He told me,
knowing how quickly
I lost interest or got distracted with all of 
life’s cultivations. 
Seeing his own seasonal
impatience
mirrored in me.

Knowing that I would appear suddenly at the harvest
After all the preparation was done. 

It just tastes better when you grow it yourself,
He said,
Trying to give me much more than a gardening lesson,
Certain I would ignore him until
I learned it on my
Own terms.

But it’s four years this month
The shoots are pushing
Up with the April thaw

And he showed me how to bend
The stalk where it allowed the break
But never to use a blade.

Follow your fingers
He told me.
Don’t make it harder than it is.

Always new and green it seems
This life
Goes on
Doesn’t it.