This cabbage plant could win my son $1,000.

It sits on the dining room table, right in the middle,
as if I owe it something.

I feel sorry for all the other cabbage plants, going to
homes where no one knows how to love a cabbage.

I told my son we could plant this cabbage.
I gave direct, false information as to my knowledge
of cabbages, their growing.

Someone else would do a much better job with this cabbage.

In no way can I imagine my son ever harvesting this cabbage,
standing there with a knife, grinning for the photo
that must be submitted in order to win the $1,ooo.

Google what month cabbages are harvested
here in Chicago, whatever USDA growing zone this is.

In any case, by then, his third grade class will have long since dissolved,
becoming fourth graders in whole other classes, or disappearing
the way some children do. So I may never know
who grows the $1,000 cabbage.

Cabbages require three feet of growing space around them.
That’s what the information sheet says.

This cabbage does not yet have three feet around it.
It’s still in the pot that my son carried home,
whether tenderly or carelessly, I don’t know —
my husband picked him up that day (and may have
carried the cabbage, as a matter of fact).

But what I meant to say is that the cabbage is still in its pot
which we then placed in a plastic cup (but I think that was a mistake,
now that I look at this situation anew) and it’s growing toward the light,

unless I’m imagining that part, too.

 

 

 

 

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From a prompt at NaPoWriMo.net, the ol’ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird thing.