Turnip, Pulled

by MICHAEL BROSNAN 

On a Wednesday afternoon,
a spill of afternoon thoughts: about

earth and seeds, about how seeds
reinvent themselves through quiet reach and rise.

How, in this garden, the sun-hungry tangle
of plants, this collective optimism of roots and greens,

so vivid, vibrant, varied, has found
a way to converse with the mica-glinting dirt,

convince the clotted soil of near clay
to live at ease with the sun’s mercurial love—

given, given, given, then nearly erased
when again all becomes ice-clenched.

Here, on the 45th Parallel, where I live,
where the growing sprints and sputters, summer

is already slipping again, the days dampening
with cooler air. You can feel the downshift

quickening toward a kind of rib-sticking, end-
of-stanza, nail-hammered enjambment called frost.

To the south now lies the easier sustenance.
Still, I feel linked in the temperate north.

Or close enough to keep me here. I reach down
and pull a third waxy turnip from the ground.

I love how it resists the pulling, then lets go.
The turnip, with its wide, soft horizon

of ivory and pink, fed by sun and rain and dirt
and all the antonyms of diffident.