Summer Ritual: An Original Poem

A few weeks ago, I posted Crocheting, a poem from an unpublished collection of memoir poems I wrote entitled A Home for the Seasons. The poem was about my maternal grandmother. Today I’m posting Summer Ritual, another poem from the collection about Dzidzi, my grandfather, and his garden. Every time my mother and I visited with my grandparents during the summers when I was a child and a young adult, Dzidzi took great pleasure in having me come down to his garden to pick some vegetables or fruit to take home with us.


SUMMER RITUAL
By Elaine Magliaro


My mother and I arrive at my grandparents’ house

late one Sunday afternoon.

Babci greets us in the kitchen

With glasses of cold drinks clinking with ice cubes.

Dzidzi fetches a small wooden basket

from the cellar, takes my hand,

and walks me down the stone path to his garden.

He leans over a tomato plant,

holds a fat red globe in his cupped hand,

and looks at me. I nod approval.

I can almost taste the tomato’s warm, juicy flesh.

We choose a dozen more and place them in the basket.

We pick three green, glossy-skinned peppers,

pull up a bunch of feather-topped carrots,

enough beets for my mother to make a pot of zimny barszcz

thickened with sour cream and floating with cucumber slices.

Every visit to my grandparents’ house

is the same this season—

a small harvest of vegetables—

and when we leave, I take home

a little basket of Dzidzi’s garden.

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At Blue Rose Girls, I have Happiness, a poem by the late Jane Kenyon.


Two Writing Teachers have the Poetry Friday Roundup.