Dzidzi's Garden: An Original Memoir Poem

 

This poem is dedicated to the memory of my maternal grandfather "Dzidzi." Dzidzi loved growing things--including fruit trees, flowers, bushes...and especially vegetables in he backyard garden. Dzidzi's Garden comes from my unpublished collection of memoir poems titled A Home for the Seasons.

DZIDZI’S GARDEN

After a long New England winter,

Dzidzi grows impatient for planting season.
He enjoys working outdoors growing things—
“like I did in the Old Country.”
How Dzidzi loves his garden.
He cares for it the way a father cares for his children.
It is his other home, the one with a ceiling of sky
and a carpet of brown earth.
In late spring, in summer, and in early autumn,
he spends his weekends and his hours
after work at the leather factory here
breaking up clods of hardened earth,
sowing seeds, watering, weeding, and tending to his plants.
During growing season, family and neighbors are always welcome
to pick carrots, cucumbers, onions, peppers, beets, beans,
and the fattest, reddest tomatoes in all of Massachusetts
from my grandfather’s vegetable patch.
We all reap the rewards of Dzidzi’s green thumb.