How A Baby Resembles A Head of Lettuce

by Regina O'Melveny

As I hold you on my lap

you scan the room from

left to right, right to

left, just because you can,

sweet round boy with

morning-blue eyes.

Then on to the next room

and the garden with grass

and hedge and baby

lettuces that crowd the planter

with plump roseate faces

until they bolt into stalks that yearn

for sun and moon with all

their bright yellow eyes.

We yearn for, learn the world

this way by leafy compass and

blooming arc. Unlike

the mother once

in a Grimm’s fairy tale

who craved lettuces within

an enchanted garden and

had to exchange her baby for

the theft of greens, no small offense, 

the child whom the witch

aptly named Rapunzel

(lamb’s lettuce in German).

Though I’d retell the story

as correspondence,

lettuce for baby, baby for lettuce.

We’re speaking about the pull of

fertility here and the witch

who wisely knows

how to plant a garden.

In my version there’s no high wall

forbidding entry.

The witch is a grandmother

with earth under

her fingernails, who holds

the mysteries of seed, leaf and

and milky stalk with awe, holds the hand

of the woman, her daughter with love

deep as a taproot to the earth’s core, holds

both the ripe baby and

the bountiful head of lettuce

in her lap with delight, holds

the wide, widening gaze.