The Garden
1 Minute Read Time
Assistant Editor Prince Bush: “The Garden” is a poem of secrecy. With its end-stopped lines, it feels as if something unsaid, something unseen, occurs after every period—a feeling that the surprising final image seems to anticipate.
Listen to Pamela Smith read “The Garden”:
The Garden
My daughter tells me to dig in the garden.
I grab a shovel and dig.
The earth resists, packed tight, like dust.
Like childbirth.
She sits down and tilts her head back.
The shovel works, or maybe I do.
I throw the dirt behind me.
My feet start to root into the ground.
I count to fifty-two.
At fifty-three, I become a cicada.
