Every year
my mother plants the same garden:

tomatoes, basil, marigolds
guarding what cannot be guarded.

I ask why
she doesn’t try something new.

She laughs
as if I’ve missed
the point of growing.

The soil remembers, she says.

I watch her kneel
where she knelt before.

Her hands press seeds
into a history
she will never write.

By July,
tomatoes redden like suns.

We eat them
with salt and silence.

By August,
basil bolts, marigolds fade.

Everything tilts toward leaving.

Still,
when autumn takes it back,
she saves what she can:

seeds, folded faith.

Winter passes through her
like a long thought.

Then she returns
and begins.

David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet whose work explores medicine, memory, and the quiet repetitions of the human body. His poems engage themes of care, mortality, and continuity through spare, image-driven lyricism. He has been published in journals including Eunoia Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Orchards, and Braided Way. He lives in Texas and continues to write at the intersection of clinical practice and lived experience.