Soo Line Community Garden 2024

We gather in this garden

we have all tended and for decades

planted and mended.

We have won the right to celebrate,

to dance a hundred dances friends, 

sing and write as many songs,

toast, clap and stand

corn, sunflower and trellis tall.

We’ve won the gift to garden this land -

wrestle weeds, row spring ground,

seed and cover, water and pray,

our roots are deep set down.

We earned our way to huddle and break 

out like seeds finding a place

for Darlene’s snap peas

Oak Man’s borage

John’s asparagus 

Michael’s wild flowers

Sally’s strawberries 

Tammy’s nettle

Dana planting on the hill

Connie and Wes, Maria and Lenny -

two mothers, two growing sons

Nacho’s students, always at home

Pam’s hollyhock’s merry welcome

Teri and Leslie’s pollinator habitat 

Jim and Kyle, weeding each morning

devoted Ellan and her volunteers

carpenter John and his cedar benches

Jess and Kedar’s tomatillos 

my Cherokee purple tomatoes 

Kayoko’s sharing of sweet herbal teas

Patience’s plot of lettuce and beets

Regina’s lilies every spring

Peter’s table for mingling.

We gather in this garden 

we have all tended and for decades

planted and mended. 

We have won the right to celebrate,

to dance a hundred dances friends, 

sing and write as many songs,

toast, clap and stand

corn, sunflower and trellis tall.