Turning the Earth
by Jaimie K. Wilson
My father always toiled in the earth –
tending his mizuna, his daikon, his kyuri,
his heirloom vegetables.
During a hard freeze,
he would build wigwams
for his tomatoes and sleep
all night between the furrows.
I imagined him out there,
sighing to his vegetables,
the light bulbs reflecting
warmly off his skin
as he squatted amongst the basil,
giving the herbs a pep talk,
shit-talking with the peppers.
I understand it now,
how the earth simply gives back
what you put into it.
It is good to sweat, to thirst
and bend your back
and smear dirt on your brow.
And it is even better
to have your own children
there, the baby playing
in a wheelbarrow of soil,
the toddlers tending
their own wild plot, pulling
the good shoots along with the weeds.
tending his mizuna, his daikon, his kyuri,
his heirloom vegetables.
During a hard freeze,
he would build wigwams
for his tomatoes and sleep
all night between the furrows.
I imagined him out there,
sighing to his vegetables,
the light bulbs reflecting
warmly off his skin
as he squatted amongst the basil,
giving the herbs a pep talk,
shit-talking with the peppers.
I understand it now,
how the earth simply gives back
what you put into it.
It is good to sweat, to thirst
and bend your back
and smear dirt on your brow.
And it is even better
to have your own children
there, the baby playing
in a wheelbarrow of soil,
the toddlers tending
their own wild plot, pulling
the good shoots along with the weeds.
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Jaimie K. Wilson is a poet and fiction writer in Jacksonville, Florida. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied poetry with Thomas Lux. Honors include the Lipkin Poetry Prize, an Atlantic Center for the Arts fellowship and a 2022-23 grant from The Community Foundation's Black Artists Endowment.
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