In Praise of Tending by Jannie Edwards

December 1, 2023
Poem title: In Praise of Tending Poet name: Jannie Edwards Poem: The way you drift to a minor key when you hum polishing the table your mother rescued from the haunted house the way you know without thinking to bring a cutting of spider plant or wandering jew to a friend who needs rooting how you let the cat out in out again cover small plants against the fray of wind and frost minister to green how you attend to blushes, stutters, quickenings that pause command at supper, Look! how light holds the willow we planted the way we lean into the current of what we remember of sacraments the way dust settles its shadows like debts carried so long they seem slight as ash how we come to know do no harm is a kind of stretching a tendril End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Jannie Edwards Previously published in Falling Blues, Jannie Edwards, Frontenac Press 2010. Jannie Edwards is a poet and essayist from Edmonton. Her most recent publication is Learning Their Names: Letters from the Home Place (Collusion Books 2022), letters written across the country by two settler colonial artists uncovering the history and aliveness of an off-grid, five-acre piece of land in northeastern Alberta they love. Forthcoming in December 2023 from Alfred Gustav Press is Blues for a Rare Moon.