To My Father, Who Grew Asparagus

To My Father Who Grew Asparagus 7/2/46-4/9/06 bd 4/06 It goes on, doesn't it, this day of April? The compost pile needing to be turned and spread over the tilled rows. Asparagus waiting to emerge after we shook it loose from old film canisters. It'll probably take three years until we get a get a single spear, he said. The roots have to reach horizontal through the sand until they run together in a tangled mat. Covered with orange rinds and egg shells and the leaves of last autumn, teaching me to tend the ground as he did friendships, frankness, and a collection of dirty jokes. You've got to finish what you start, he told me, knowing how quickly I lost interest or got distracted with all of life's cultivations. Seeing his own seasonal impatience mirrored in me. Knowing that I would appear suddenly at the harvest after all the preparation was done.

It just tastes better when you grow it yourself, he said, trying to give me more than a gardening lesson, certain I would ignore him until I learned it on my own terms. But it's four years this month. The shoots are pushing up with the April thaw. And he showed me to bend the stalk where it allowed the break, but never to use a blade. Follow your fingers, he told me. Don't make it harder than it is. Always new and green it seems this life goes on doesn't it?