SUMMER RITUAL: An Original Memoir Poem

In June, I wrote a post about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) that included a memoir poem about picking strawberries in my grandfather’s garden. Every visit to the home of my maternal grandparents in summertime meant a trip to Dzidzi’s garden to pick fresh vegetables. Dzidzi loved sharing what he grew with relatives and neighbors.

 Here’s is a poem about my memories of my visits to my grandfather’s garden:

SUMMER RITUAL

My mother and I arrive at my grandparents’ house

late one Sunday afternoon.

Babci greets us in the kitchen

with 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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