My dad told me not to expect
the persimmons he planted to be
the ones that glow construction orange
in the produce aisle of the local Asian Food Store.
These and the rocky white turnips,
which gape from the ground like eyeballs,
he offers to me. And a promise of hazelnuts as well.

His plantings are safe places for the deer and quail
who bed down in fields of prairie grasses. Some seasons
yield better cover than others so he also traps
the scavenging raccoons, taking them to the neighbor
who pulls their skins off like socks and sells the pelts.

Decades ago, in my teenage years, back when trespassing
hands whisked away my childhood and the coo
of a controlling voice sang me manipulative flattery,
I wondered where a caretaker was for me,
a groundskeeper who’d keep the weeds at bay.

Today, my dad gives me a knife.
We walk the scratchy fields filled with blooms,
and he tells me to fill my jar, offers me the only specimen
he sees of the golden butterfly milkweed.