Poetry

September 14th, 2025

Lenorah Korpela
Sweeter in Time

When I was little,
I helped my mom in the garden.
We made it together.

I remember the feeling
of the dirt caking over my knees,
trying as hard as I could
not to drop
more than one seed of corn
into each patch of dirt.

It was a big garden;
I could have gotten lost in it.
The tangle of tomatoes
welcomed you inside,

followed by peas,
cabbage,
carrots,
squash,
pumpkins,
potatoes,
and rows upon rows of corn.

I hated the work.
I did it, though.

Every year
there were peas to pick from the vine
and potatoes to pull from the ground.

My mother
would drill me with the reasons
I would come to love it

and I eventually understood.

I remember the way
our garden smelled
in late July,
with the promise
of what it would provide
in a few short weeks.

I could never wait, though.
My brother and I
would pull up carrots and radishes,
wiping them, staining our shirts
and eating them before Mom caught us.

We would never admit that she was right,
that they were never as good before they were ripe.

We blamed it on the crows,
the rabbits
and the deer.

My mother fed me her patience in those hours of labor.

I wait until August now.

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Lenorah Korpela is 20 years old, from a cattle farm in Mahtowa, Minnesota. She is a fully online student, as she is working as an elementary school paraprofessional. In her free time, she likes to write recreational fiction and poetry. Following graduation, Lenorah will be teaching English at the high school level.