KNOW
Be Here Know
In the morning I put on long pants for the June heat of New Orleans. I gather betel leaf from the East facing side of my fence and praise the shade. When I first moved in, there was no fence. Sometimes I would look out my window and see Malik and Xavier playing in the yard. They liked to throw sticks at the silkie chickens. Miss Dawn would yell at them, “You leave them Ewoks alone!” And I yelled at them, too.
When I was a kid, I caught tadpoles and squeezed them in my hands until their guts exploded.
I could not have known then of my reverence for the living world. I caught wasps and bees and put them in the same jar. That was my Friday Night Fight. I did not know that perhaps my murder was a need for control, for a place, for a way to know certainty.
And I would not know the heat of morning without shade. I would not know night without morning.
My sweetheart said, “You used your hands to make money.” I used my hands to gather what the earth gave: spiderwort and longevity spinach, okinawa spinach, sissoo and turmeric and cardamom leaves. I used my hands to grow the betel leaf. I used the knowledge of an Indian man I met on craigslist seven years ago. I used what he gave me. I used a brown paper bag. I used time.
In the world of uncertainty, 40 dollars still is not a lot of money. In the world of certainty, 40 dollars is not enough. For in the world of certainty, I want to grip the future and look through an eyehole and know. Like the boy at George Wyth Pond in Cedar Falls, Iowa, there was no way of knowing that I would be gathering greens this morning in New Orleans. There was no way of knowing five years ago that I would even be growing these greens.
The figs have begun to ripen on the trees that live in the hottest part of the yard. In my quest for certainty, I want to wake before the birds, to gather all the tree has to give. I want others to know. I want kids to see that trees can be money. I want kids to see that food does not come in a plastic bag, that the taste they love is an addiction, that most of what is offered at the corner store is a chemical without substance.
