Trout feeding in the current,
creek steaming in the cold;
we stood in the willow brake,
highway out behind us,
looking for the moose we’d seen.

(Transylvanian, a Softneck Silverskin/Artichoke garlic)
Teeny Biaggio is twelve years old.
Her mother brought her to my farm to interview me
for a paper for her sixth grade English class.
We sat outside, on the deck.

(French Germinadour, a Hardneck Purple Stripe Garlic)
My father was born in Russia, my mother in Poland.
They grew garlic in our garden in Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh.
If I had an ear ache Poppa pushed a garlic clove into my ear.
If I had a toothache Momma made me chew garlic cloves.

Over the last thirty-five years I have collected eighty-five varieties
of garlic from seventeen different countries. They differ in:
appearance, size, skin colors, number of cloves, taste.
To defeat the gophers, I plant in wood boxes with wire bottoms.
Planting-time: September through November.
60 boxes, 150 cloves planted in each box.

When they left, when they trotted off to play war
They were fresh, from some mid-west high school,
Athletic letterman’s jackets and class rings
they love to sing songs their father sung when they were young
when they were their age, when they were fresh
Classic melodies, timeless harmonies
Sung off key by 4 South Dakota boys in a poorly armored Humvee
45 mph down a dusty Baghdad street
the words removed them briefly from the anxiety, the intensity
the propensity of bullets and bombs gravitating towards American soldiers
the tune soldiers on from cautious voices