I used to sit and watch tomatos grow.
The nuns would say "Where is that foolish child?"
No one betrayed me. No one said "The garden"
So I was safe. The sisters would have smiled

at the betrayal. "What garden?" The very notion
was absurd, amid the concrete. They'd sooner believe
I was on Mars, or adrift in the Indian Ocean.

A dirt patch, really: cursing the waning light 
of another lifeless-day, I gazed
with sunlamp radiance, benevolent patience 
at my secret tomatos, unfazed

by the danger of discovery,
oblivious to the need to eat -- 
not wanting friends, just the feel
of cold, clammy soil on my hands and feet.

It came in the mail, the box of seeds.
I was supposed to sell them and win
a bike or some other childhood wonder.
Keeping them would be a sin.

It would be stealing. I did not care.
The time had come for me to have a vice.
Something mine. Something precious. It seemed
that growing illicit tomatos would suffice.

As a man, I am embarrassed to say
how naive the boy was, how willing
to believe, when the radio said tomatos
had struck in Kansas and Oklahoma, killing

dozens, that I could have such power.
A seven year old can plant seeds
and wait as long as it takes, nurturing,
watering, clearing away the weeds -- 

Racing through lessons in school,
scratching his groin at Sunday mass
trusting no one to tell, no one to care
about his lethal plants, fragile as glass.