Street Garden

Ever pass a street garden On the lower East Side You know the kind Long and narrow Squeezed between two tenements Ever wonder how it came to be Who made it? Where did it come from? Odds and ends And garden tools clutter one corner Benches are set aside A children’s swing waits at the far end The garden is not magnificent Like the ones you see in suburbia But like every garden in the City It beckons to you with a history of its own Take a long look When you peer through the chain link fence See the rows of growing green things They didn’t happen by accident. Grassroots activists fought to stop the decay of the lower East Side Squatters took over abandoned houses Theirs were marked by struggle Hardship And violence They and kindred spirits captured the activism of the 70’s and 80’s From Alphabet City Running along Avenue A to Avenue D They used terms Everyone understood Affordable apartments Living spaces. Neighborhood volunteers Worked the soil Hunched over Hands black with dirt Digging past bricks, rocks and rubble Breaking up the ground Feeling the moistness of the Earth In their fingertips Their whole being Sensing the beginnings of new life.