Wednesday, March 12, 2014

A Yuyu Anthology Poem, 'City Gardener' by Mindy Kronenberg!

City Gardener
for Seamus Heaney and Yuyutsu Sharma




My father never owned any land save
the home he and mother bought on Long Island—
a palace compared to our tiny apartment in Queens.

He grew up under the boughs of subway systems
and the ashen skylines of the City, but my father’s
heart sprouted with meadows and gardens, his spirit

airborne in the arias of birds. The poetry in my father’s soul
came out at night after we were asleep, scratched on pads
into love notes that burst a copse of trees flowered

and dangling fruit.  It was under the moon that he planted words
but by sun rise he lay down his pen,  boil water for his morning coffee,
kiss my mother’s dreaming face, and take to the road far from the greenery,

back to the greys and stone of his territory, the ledgers  and  invoices
bearing the tight black lines of his salesman’s scratch,
his pen tucked in a pocket until it shivered for the garden.



An award-winning and widely published poet, Mindy Kronenberg teaches writing and literature at SUNY, Empire State College, through Poets & Writers programs in the community, and through the schools for BOCES. Kronenberg is the editor of Book/Mark Quarterly Review and the author of Dismantling the Playground (Birnhamwood) and Images of America: Miller Place (Arcadia)


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