"The Northern Lights were seen in the Deep South."

-"Findings", Harper's Magazine, January 2012

The Lucky Kiwi

I can not grow a single thing.

I come from a long line of Aunts, The Greens-
so fitting because they could take a forsaken rosebush
covered in gasoline, shake it off, wash it up, stick it in the mud,
and make it bloom like a float at the Portland Parade.

And look here,...a kiwi.
Bright and green and snaking up my house in Middle Tennessee.
A place I came to four years ago and cried in the Inglewood Supermarket
wondering where all of the vegetables had gone.

"What will we eat?! How will we feed them?!"
I sobbed over the phone to my husband,
lamenting the nutrition of our children.
I missed the beauty of a farmer's market stocked produce section .
I missed a lot of things.

And yet here, in the middle of my back stoop,
crawling upwards against the odds and natural expectations,
it blooms into an exotic fruit.
Viridescent, full grown, hairy.

It is like God sent it down just to prove He could do it;
to prove He knew this place better than I did.
Like a message. Like a love note.
Like living proof of something else.