Garlic-planting time

There has not been much to recommend the future lately,
but still you go outside in gumboots, three layers of wool,
the rhythms of the garden offering solace.

Under dark hills that are not the mountain
you were born under, you prepare the beds
for the shortest day. Preventative medicine.

You stoop, claw at the earth
digging over the dirt, raking in
sheep manure and comfrey tea.

You hope to grow enough for a whole year. It
will hang in plaits around the garage, drying
in the warm summer air, warding off colds and evil spirits.

Have you noticed how there is a lull in the cold,
before it rains? It gets a little warmer. This is
what to look for – small breaks in the weather. Breathers.

When a friend brings you cloves
of new varieties: silverskin, purple stripe –
you cradle them like papery currency, rustling gift.

This is sorting and healing. This is
planning and tending. With muddy fists,
you take possession of the year.

Helen Lehndorf
from The Comforter, Seraph Press, 2011

Over the coming months, Poetry Shelf Monday Poem spot will include poems that have stuck to me over time, poems that I’ve loved for all kinds of reasons. Poems that comfort or delight or challenge. Poems that strike the eye, ear or heart. This sublime poem by Helen Lehndorf chimes so sweetly as I plan the summer garden, ‘this storing and healing’, and I am mindful of how we take possession of each day, how we build and grow and connect. Planting does this. Words do this. Poetry does this. In these turbulent times, in these diabolical and strained times when the future feels so uncertain, I will cherish each new day. I will plant seeds.

Author and teacher Helen Lenhdorf’s latest book A Forager’s Life is a creative nonfiction nature memoir. In 2023 it made the top ten list for NZ nonfiction. Helen has published essays, reviews and poems in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Spin-off, Pantograph Punch and Landfall. She is also the author of the poetry collection The Comforter, which made The Listener’s 100 Best Books list in the year of release, and Write to the Centre, a book about the joy of keeping a journal.