Ode to Backyard Gardening

Lipless mouth of the earth—she has planted her many clocks
The ground is pregnant in too many places
with tiny empresses on her wrist 

Her hands weed out the thyme; time is a spool; an autumn seamstress of patience
A tundra tending architect
Club bouncer of biomes

Find her; search her
thaw her out—
her belly has swollen too big

Her nurturing placenta caskets; pulping over; the collection, 
Of everything inside her, childish and buried;
Asphyxiated paper cut-out dolls
Frosting over

Ask them; flax and psyllium
Aren’t fathers equal to mothers?
As pistil is to stamen
Tell me, Fertilizer and measuring tape of sacrifice

Mother has become a statue and we no longer wait,
Waiting is for summer, when she is an ant mound

And we bring her saffron offerings
And a whistle for her feet

So that she blesses this house that waits for
No one and nothing but garden gnomes and
Wrist watches

Underground, father doesn’t know how we exist
He knows only that we are boundless
Citizens of space debris

Father is our earth monger 
Soil for soul

—Rose Haberer, Canada. She writes: “My name is Rose Haberer. I am sixteen years old from Toronto, Canada. My family has roots in Poland, Lithuania and South Africa. My writing is inspired by feminism and the authors I love such as Kelly Link, Jennifer Egan, Mona Awad, Joan Didion, and Sylvia Plath—along with the women in my life who have led me to write about the struggles and complexities of femininity.

Overwhelmed by thoughts of climate disaster, I often find myself flooded with emotions that I need to excise through artistic expression. In this piece, I reflect on how nature functions within my family, how the ecosystem in my backyard is tended to, and how my family members each have roles within that ecosystem, both functional and emotional. In the piece, I view the members of my family as belonging to the garden, reflecting how we are all children of nature.