Radishes. 
 
I take Phoebe down to the swamp garden
where I hope she will admire the flowers
but there seems to have been flooding
and more gravel than anything. 
I think that’s something, I say, pointing.
We stop on the way back up to the house
so I can show her my basil seedlings,
only Phoebe thinks they are radishes 
which means she will have to come back 
in six weeks to harvest them, being
the only person I know who likes radishes.
I grow them because they are easy to grow - 
look how all the radish seeds came up
and not one of the basil seeds.  They
will taste of clean dirt, and water, washed 
dirt, and crunchy water, like sea water
without the salt, like pond water 
with pepper silted through it like salt 
through the sea, like a friendship
in which each friend is oblivious of
the wrong she has done the other, and each
friend is washed through with the wrong
her friend has done her, like the middle
of the day with an eclipse of the sun,
like midnight with a full moon,
washed through and washed clean.