The tomatoes want staking again and I have been putting it off, the way I put off most things that require me to kneel.
But this morning I went out early, before the heat settled its full weight on the yard, and crouched there in the clay-heavy soil with twine and a handful of green stakes and the particular quiet that belongs to gardens before anyone else is awake.
There is something the dirt asks of you that has no name in polite company — not humility exactly, more like willingness. Willingness to be uncomfortable. To press your thumb into the earth and feel how cold it still is underneath, how little the surface warmth goes down.
A mockingbird worked through its whole catalog somewhere above the fence while I tied stems to stakes, gently, the way you’d steady something uncertain.
And then a thing I can’t quite finish saying: there was a moment, hands still, kneeling in the smell of green and iron and heat, when I thought I understood something about why people used to pray outdoors —