A garden in a kettle,
what enticement to know more;
no ordinary flowerpot
hints so of family lore.
Kettles are like aprons,
remnants, scraps and shreds
of kitchens gone to dust
except inside our heads.
Replaced by kitchen jewelry
gleaming, digitized,
its plump and stolid air
is yet unbowdlerized.
Something in its roundness
brings noodle dough to mind,
vegetable soup with barley,
doughnuts cinnamon-brined,
children up on tip-toe
to watch and sniff, content,
the world in proper order
as it was surely meant.
Today its storied depths
give rise to happy greenery,
rooted, like our memories,
in distant kitchen scenery.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,
and to gardener and family preservationist D.J. Berg.
Oddments 