Though I am not a beet person,
I admire the color and shape,
the just-pulled-from-the-earthiness
aroma of the spherical roots
with their curly tails.

But when I touch the frilly leaves,
I see his hands on them, tugging
them out of inhospitable dirt.

Somehow he got them to grow
in our back yard, after trucking home
pickup beds full of “soil amendments”
smelling of rotting matter that he
promised would make the seeds grow.

And they did: Somehow he coaxed
gangly beans to crawl up the fence
and tomatoes to sprout, hanging
like red globes in wire cages
stuck in half a wine barrel.

He said he could help me learn
to love the flavor of heavy-as-baseballs,
deep crimson beets, which I didn’t,
though I told him I did.

Like the hops he boiled on the stove
to turn into beer, like the wine
aging in the basement, the handmade
pasta hanging in ribbons from
open cupboard doors,

I found myself gobsmacked by
this husband who somehow knew
how to help things become themselves
and make it look easy,

just as he did, I’ve come
to realize all these years later,
with me.

•••

(In memory of Cliff Polland, 1952–2001)