"the watering can...."

when I was just a little girl
about four or five, we moved to
a farm in Iowa.  We had cows and
chickens, and dad planted a big
garden with pole beans, and tomatoes
the size of melons, and potatoes
and peppers, and tiny heads of
cabbage which reminded me of
something that might blossom any day...

each morning I would look out of my
bedroom window while the moon was still
in the sky but the birds were chirping,
and I would see my dad bent over rows
of lettuce and carrots...pulling weeds and
eating warm tomatoes off the vine
as if they were apples plucked from the
highest branch of a gnarled tree.

in his back pocket, barely visible from
my second floor window, was a salt shaker...

he'd pull weeds for a while, reach down and
pour cool water over his hands from the old
wateringcan at his side, then reach across the
rows of spinach and mustard greens, to 
pluck a ripe tomatoe from its small green cap...

some mornings it was all I could do to let him
be alone in the garden....but he was happiest there,
and watching him do what he loved most,
was even more lovely than
eating warm tomatoes for breakfast while
watching the sun rise....