What would you like to be when you grow up?
Ponsot, Marie
What would you like to be when you grow up? I Here I am in the garden on my knees digging as if I were innocent, gloveless in island soil-sandy, unstable, hardly soil at all, very sharp...
...It has taught me planning which is essential is impossible...
...Your pleasure is, like me, physical...
...I Here I am in the garden on my knees digging as if I were innocent, gloveless in island soil-sandy, unstable, hardly soil at all, very sharp and mineral...
...I head for the kitchen, to cook...
...Marie Ponsot Commonweal 2 6 May22, 1998...
...Mistakes (bittersweet, honeysuckle) come back every year hugely bountiful...
...I think I've got whatever I need in the overhead compartment...
...There must be something I can do...
...Planted to temper the heat, this garden has trees & fruit trees...
...I can't keep on counting my fingers to make sure all your parts are on hand...
...II The reason for the garden is this rooming house, this tidy body's heart, my minded body where I now rent only the attic regularly, and the kitchen, on odd nights...
...It's at its best in winter, free of me, I can then imagine i t - - its six wonderful places to sit (next to the tarragon and sage, under the dogwood for breakfast, on a log beside the speedwell...
...Dear garden of my making stuffed with my ideas & sweat, you are reasonable...
...It is the shabby residence or sidereal repeat of recurrent astonishment...
...I have no other plans...
...I so choose, I think...
...You were not what I needed after all...
...So, behave...
...After a stormy spring it's a low-walled well of green bouncing and blossoming...
...And it has known in every room the othering bliss of child my child, each child different for each other's sake, each blessing me blind, tenant & ceaseless & tiresomely teaching me relentlessly to reach joy by choosing to love...
...Only the rich can choose to be poor...
...So do the peonies, lilies, & daylilies, & grandma's rampant rose...
...Already it turns me toward autumn crocus now in leaf, chrysanthemum, feverfew, white & gold after the pears drop...
Vol. 125 • May 1998 • No. 10
