Welcome to the June issue of Wild Greens.

Each year I anticipate difficulty in writing an introduction to our annual themeless issue, nicknamed The Garden Issue. How to draw connections between works whose only commonality is Wild Greens? Turns out again that I’m worried for nothing, haven’t we all been there! Our June issue is about the roots we plant, the places we come from, and the people we love.

In Maggie Topel’s digital logo, curious mushrooms grow in a tiny fairy garden hidden within the roots of a tree. 

The speaker’s garden of academia is threatened by the boots of those who exclude people’s voices and trample over academic freedom in “Eureka, Akademia,” a poem by Juan Carlos (Juanca) Hugues. 

In “Spring Kiss” by Lisa Dailey, an embroidered face blooms against a vivid watercolor backdrop of flowers. Melissa W. B. Tan’s short story “Aubade” considers the changing landscape of the narrator’s hometown, Singapore, through a reflection on the coming dawn.  

In “I Will Win Again This Year” by Ray Rigsby, a robot contemplates a past victory in a garden contest and plans for another win.

Carol Barrett's “The Clearing” is written for the poet’s sister, to honor the time in their childhood playing. In “Yellow Flowers,” Judith R. Robinson paints a joyful scene of flowers in acrylic, seeming to bend their heads toward one another, sharing their excitement for the season. “Dad,” a personal essay by Patrick O’Connor, honors the writer’s father on what would have been his 99th birthday.

Hayley J. Boyle's cheerful watercolor cover for the issue was taken from the archives of June 2024. 

The people and places we come from, the communities we form, and the future we build together are all a part of the gardens we grow.

-Rebecca

Eureka, Akademia 

Aubade

by Melissa W. B. Tan

The birds rose each day before the sun, calling their early-morning greetings to each other through the dewy dawn as they started on the business of the day.

The yellow orioles woke the earliest, making their throaty call-and-response as the outlines of clouds became visible in the inky sky. 

The little bulbul families rose next, a soft articulate warbling from the bushes where they nested. 

On lucky days, they would be joined by a magpie-robin, threading a bold melodic tune as it flitted between the trees.

On other days, a little chorus: the titterings of flocks of white-eyes, the broody gargle of green pigeons, or the bright chirp-chirp of glossy red-eyed starlings as they rustled through the leaves in search of food.

Then, tardy but unfailing, the triumphant crow of the koel: a sonorous whooping two-note tattoo that began tentative and low before lightening in pitch and pace with each repetition, gathering steadily into a shrill crescendo that erupted from the treetops to herald the crowning of the sun.1  

As far as Lian Choo was concerned, dawn was the best time of the day. Rising before the sun, as the birds did, she savoured the first fresh breaths of the morning, grassy and sweet with the dew that had gathered on the leaves. Her early movements were easy, smoothed and slowed by the stillness of the receding dark and sated by the pap of the deep night’s rest. As she loaded her trays of kueh2 into the car, she paused to observe a little cobweb ensconced in the unlikeliest of places, its location betrayed by tiny droplets of water that had gathered on its filaments like the most delicate of jewels. 

What a blessing it was, to live in this house! How lovely to hear the dawn chorus so close around one’s ears; how good to feel close to the earth once more. Having lived in a cramped high-rise for the better part of her life, she had almost forgotten the feeling. How odd to think that something as simple as birdsong—so commonplace as to be unremarkable in the city of her youth—was now the exclusive preserve of those who could afford to purchase landed property. The city had changed so much: there were hardly any kampongs3 left to speak of, and even the feathered inhabitants had been displaced by towers of concrete and steel, their modern aubade a pale echo of the past. 

And the people had changed too: her daughter, for one, was a child of the new, with her endless grousing that the birds disturbed her sleep. To her, they were just birds, no different from the mynahs and crows that screeched and cawed as they scavenged the detritus of void decks and hawker centres. 

Yet bitter as the sentiment might seem, for Lian Choo, this thought held no rancour. It was right and fitting for her child to move in lockstep with the new, leaving her lot and their old ways behind. Better still if the girl’s thoughts advanced beyond her mother’s understanding, so far beyond as to place her at the vanguard of modernity, ready to seize the future and bend it to her will. Yes, it was true! Lian Choo was slightly in awe of her daughter. And in spite of her friends’ teasing, she was not at all ashamed of the fact, considering it evidence of a job well done. If children never exceeded their parents, then how would lives get better and societies advance? 

Having loaded the goods in the car, Lian Choo chose two mugs from the cupboard and set them on the counter before checking herself and putting one away. It hadn’t been that long since her girl had moved abroad; surely it was just a matter of time before she got used to her absence. 

She made her tea and sat down. An odd realisation occurred to her, that she had never lived alone in her life before. Perhaps that was why everything had acquired a strange, detached sort of feeling all of a sudden and why she had never learnt to cook just for one. That being said, Lian Choo did not consider her solitude to be cause for desolation. Rather, she saw the present discomfort as evidence of good fortune—that she had been blessed with good company throughout her years. She missed her daughter’s presence now, but there was nothing she could do about that. Perhaps this was her cue from the universe to get to know her neighbours better. 

She thought a little wistfully of her old home, of Mrs. Ang, Mr. Khoo, Aunty Lakshimi… Nobody ever locked their gates in their old block, and she missed the busy corridors full of chatter and children’s laughter and the delicious smells of cooking food. Then it dawned upon her that she had been intimidated by the privacy of her new neighbourhood, the chain-link fences and crystalline koi ponds a seemingly insuperable barrier to the inhabitants within. But the people within were still people, surely, and no less kind or friendly than those she had known before. 

There was really no good reason to let some wire and water keep her away from her community. For all she knew, they might have thought of her as the proud one, hiding behind the little thicket in her front yard. No, she had been silly here. She would take a tray of kueh around on the weekend to remedy the situation. That was a good thought.

Humming a little to herself, she got into the old Toyota and set off to work. 

Notes

1. The birds mentioned are (in order of appearance): black-naped oriole, yellow-vented bulbul, oriental magpie-robin, Indian white-eye, pink-necked green pigeon, Asian glossy starling, and Asian koel.

2. A bite-sized snack or dessert commonly found in Southeast Asian and Chinese cuisine.

3. Villages.

The Clearing

Dad

by Patrick O'Connor

He entered the hospital on his seventy-fifth birthday and never came out. On the way to the house that was now just Mom’s, I tried to pretend this was expected, and tried to sort out how Dad would want me to feel.

That part was hard. This was the guy who didn’t talk about his service in World War II because he served in the US. According to him, if you didn’t go Over There, you didn’t really serve. 

This was also the guy who took over a struggling business and came home every night with a cordial outlook that, despite his best efforts, was often tinged with tired. Everyone would have understood if he wanted to talk about it. But that didn’t happen with the family. Only with Mom, in short sentences, after the kids had gone to bed.

I decided the best thing to do in his memory was to get a sack of White Castles. Dad loved a good burger, and enjoyed a good story, and sliders seemed to fill the bill on both ends—if you love the food, you’re more inclined to laugh and talk. In retrospect, I was just hungering for stability, and I was hoping the burgers would do that, even at 10:30 in the morning.

We all seemed a little unsure on how to proceed, although Mom took the lead on one issue. Mr. I Didn’t Really Serve insisted he not have a flag over his coffin. That’s why, when I walked into the funeral home, I was surprised to see one flowing across Dad’s box, a sight I consider one of the most poignant in all of this mortal existence. I greeted Mom and gently expressed my surprise at the flag, since I knew Dad’s wishes.

“Yeah,” Mom said after a long pause. “Tough. It will give us something to talk about the next time I see him.”

So now I knew Mom would be just fine.

I didn’t inherit his abilities to fix things, so whenever the mood struck me to try, I inevitably ended up making many trips to the hardware store. Dad’s unofficial rule was that a successful handyman effort required two trips or less, so when one of my last do-it-yourself exploits achieved that, I returned to the car, and felt Dad was smiling on me, and with me. 

He showed up at other times, too. I thought about the excited way he talked with kids, a reminder he was a kid himself, who, in some ways, always seemed irked he had to grow up. Of Dad’s habit of saying, “Stop me if I’ve told you this story before,” but still finishing the story once we told him it was familiar, all with a gentle look that said, “Hey, throw me a bone here.”

In time, remembering him was less about his physical presence, and more about what he instilled. Kindness, gentle words, humor, an overall quiet way of going about what he needed to go about. To be fair to life, his moments of frustration and disappointment were sometimes fiery, but their source was also clear. Dad was afraid, and didn’t know what to do with that. Who among us can say anything different?

I write this on Dad’s 99th birthday. Like every day, it’s a day to be grateful for the qualities Dad gave to this existence—in my existence—and to know their timelessness is where Dad lives now, and likely always has been, something I’ll likely better understand once I’m Over There.

Mission accomplished, Dad.