Radish
The pleasure of finding one red radish
in the dense green foliage my father called
a garden was a ticket into his just praise,
my small system of effort, reward,
accomplishment I could finally arrange.
We’d sit at the table in the kitchen, look
for birds he told us were rare, and wait for him
to bite into our plucked radish, halfway through
his sandwich that mom had made, again.
We waited for the way his eyes would close
just after the crunch into it, then the glimpse
of white meat inside the thin red skin, so exotic
to the three of us who still held close our naïve
palates for foods, thoughts, acts. Imagine
the taste we conjured from his face
wrinkled in tan content, to be home for lunch
eating food he had grown, harvested by his children
and given to him like jewels we had formed
in our sandbox.
*
Katie Kalisz is a Professor in the English Department at Grand Rapids Community College, where she teaches composition and creative writing. Quiet Woman, her first book, was a finalist for the 2018 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. She is the recipient of a 2023 Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, and her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her second book, Flu Season, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. She lives in Michigan with her husband and their three children.
