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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