Drying Garlic
Drying Garlic
for Eavan Boland
I pulled the heads when the internet said to –
The two lowest leaves dead, a third
Beginning to die, like the first loss
Of feeling that heralds the stroke.
While everything you know happened
This year was happening
The cloves were turning into bulbs
And they didn’t once cross my mind.
But today they came up easy,
Like they’d been waiting for me,
Through with dirt and darkness.
I tied them in bunches of five
And hung them in the garden shed
Where they hang now as I write this,
Drying in the night air,
Beginning to put on their thin skins.
I want to know everything
They learned in the dark.
A few weeks and I will
Smash them with the flat of a knife.
Maybe I’ll taste it.