The poem I share today is from Chen Chen, a US poet currently based in New England.
Set the Garden on Fire
by Chen Chen
for Jeanette Li
My friend’s new neighbors in the suburbs
are planting a neat row of roses
between her house & theirs.
Her neighbors smile, say the roses are part
of a community garden project, that’s all.
But they whisper, too—whisper plans for trees,
a wall of them. They plant rumors
that her house is hiding illegals, when it’s aunts
& uncles, visiting. They grow tall accusations
fed by talk radio, that her house was bought
with drug money, not seventeen years of woks
sizzling, people serving, delivering, filing,
people scrubbing, refilling, running—her family
running the best restaurant in town.
Like with your family, my friend says, once we
moved in, they stopped calling us
hardworking immigrants.
Friend, let’s really move in, let’s
plunge our hands into the soil.
Plant cilantro & strong tomatoes,
watermelon & honey-hearted cantaloupe,
good things, sweeter than any rose.
Let’s build the community garden
that never was. Let’s call the neighbors
out, call for an orchard, not a wall.
Trees with arms free, flaming
into apple, peach, pear—every imaginable,
edible fire.
Come friend, neighbor,
you, come set the garden on fire
with all our hard-earned years, tender labor
of being here, ceaseless & volcanic
making of being here, together.
©Chen Chen, Split This Rock’s The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database
Chen Chen
Gardens and Community
The poem, Set the Garden on Fire, by Chen Chen gives a poignant picture of the contrast between welcome and exclusion. While exclusion keeps out the other, welcome is generous space where the different is made to feel familiar.
In the poem, the first example of "community garden" is something that establishes who is part of a community and who is not (think Homeowner's Association telling you what color to paint your house or, in this case, a wall of roses that is supposedly part of an overall neighborhood plan). It can also be a call to "really move in," to make a community with who is there already as well as those coming in, ushering in those who are strange to us as members of the community that surrounds a particular place.
In the poem, the language of garden and growth is both metaphorical and literal.
The "walls" and "whispers" that are planted, grown, and spread by unwelcoming neighbors are contrasted with the good, wholesome, edifying things that could be planted in the ground instead. An orchard that supplies needs for any who come near, with open branches that reach in all directions offering free fruit is contrasted with a wall of roses, ornaments that are meant to be admired, but not approached. The rose wall's main function, though perhaps softened by appearances, is to bar those who are different or suspicious to us, from intruding.
In contrast to this is the "community garden" the narrator envisions, the type that breaks downs walls instead of creating them.
Since food is something that connects us to the earth and our creaturely needs, it also connects us to each other. A community garden can do this work. Working together, gardening together, eating together can dispel suspicion and strangeness, replacing it with welcome and community. It can change neighbors of mere proximity into real friends and neighbors—those who are there "together."
An Invitation to Our Readers
With this poem in mind, I invite readers to send in brief stories and pictures of your own experience with gardens that can be shared with other readers. How has a personal or community garden built bonds between you, other people, and other creatures? In your experience, how have you seen land, food, and place create community connections in your life? Send in your picture and/or brief story (100 words or less) by October 1 and we will include them in a special "readers share" post.
Feel free to leave a comment below (you can sign in through your email) or contact me directly at louise.conner@circlewood.online.
Louise
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