We knew it was a fault to love
a place, to believe a cure
 
for hunger lived in the ground.
In July shade, that dark torch
 
burning in the air between us,
you watered dirt, broke beans,
 
snipped leaves with your barber’s eye.
You said if we separated
 
magnet from root, killed
beetles and mealworms, slugs,
 
we wouldn’t fail if the rain failed
and moiled our furrows with guilt.
 
The moon warps vegetables
with its incubations and foils,
 
and to such elements I was
sensitive—the nipple given, half-wet,
 
the dirt that cries for its milk.
Years later, I still feel its pull,
 
and confess I want to return
to that place, sun on my shoulders
 
and face, where I might revive
that garden, channel to it water,
 
and tend it like a mother who stays
with her dead child, who won’t let go,
 
who will sleep in the same bed with it.