In the Kingdom of the Ditch

A Mennonite in the Garden

18 A Mennonite in the Garden We staked and tied our tomatoes like the woman in your poem who had her tongue screwed to the roof of her mouth, and like that woman the tomatoes came to harm, sacrificed to our hunger. Even our children know Jan Luyken’s etchings, the heft of persecution, the reward of history’s painstaking script: Maeyken Wens on a spit, flames rising from wood cut and split by our own industriousness, or Anneken Hendriks lashed to a ladder, men trudging forward like mules, walking the wooden staves until they stood upright. With so much rain the fruit grows too fast and too heavy, some of it breaking the stalk without ripening. Our neighbor’s tomatoes have blight, leaves wilted, so we collect the green from our broken stalks, make relish and bring it to their door. Why couldn’t those women have remained untouched, somehow God leaving the tomatoes unscathed? 19 The boy, who in my confusion, wanders between these stories, plays a part he never asked for: pear bestowed through the dancing blaze, as if forgiveness could conquer the anger of such flames. We should know fire isn’t fastidious: fuel is fuel as it hisses, then becomes ashes; soil in the garden blacker for these efforts. For Julia Spicher Kasdorf ...