Bounty

In the dewy morning the cucumbers

you twisted from prickly garden vines

will darken and crisp on your yellow

kitchen table, preserving a memory

of tendrils crawling through wormy soil

and the broad leaves that canopied

them in the heated day. They remember

stretching from melon flowers. They

remember the bees who sugared

the stigma. Their seeds will tell you a story

of sowing and reaping, a tale suspended

in jelly, recited in your salads, read

in the Benedictine spread on your bread,

and tasted in an emerald grace.