木根: Night Gardner
Hangzhou, China
2025, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
My father never spun tales of the past.
Instead, he put 根 [roots] in our names.
He named us like trees
straining towards the earth: 传根 [passing root],
根生 [taking root], 木根 [wooden root].
He wanted us anchored
to nothing but air
and the dark soil beneath our feet.
传根 [passing root], the eldest,
had a godmother—a neighbor or cousin—
who arrived only with Spring Festival.
She’d cup his face, whispering
words I never learned to translate:
喝糖水蜜蜜甜，好养活！1
A blessing like sap, sticky and sweet.
根生 [taking root], the youngest,
shot up tallest, true to his name.
Growth seemed to pulse
from the soles of his feet
where they touched the ground.
He slept curled beside our father’s warmth.
I am 木根 [wooden root].
This name, Father said,
is to remember: support the elder,
tend the younger. Tough. Tender.
He also told me that bean sprouts crave the night.
So, since age five, I’ve slipped
from the shared bed’s tangle, blind
in 3 AM’s dark, wading into the garden.
Fingers find cool earth,
the scent of turned soil sharp.
I pour water, a thin silver stream
in moonlight. Pluck, toss, lift. Repeat.
Night after night. Is it any wonder
I’m the shortest stalk?
One night, by the riverbank’s sigh,
I stumbled through wild maple shade—
found a head of hair:
Long. Wet. Tangled thick
as roots wrenched from 1952’s mud.
Nothing but hollow dark beneath.
I filled the cavity with earth,
patted it smooth like a seedbed.
Once, father said we’d see a movie.
We walked without words
through the rustling dusk,
fields hushed around us.
We returned just as silent.
I can’t recall the year,
only the weight of an open sky.
1 Have some sugar water, it’s sweet. (You’ll be) easier to raise!
Reflection
This poem started from a quiet memory—not exactly mine, but my grandfather’s. He passed away when I was younger, but I grew up hearing about the way he would tend to bean sprouts every night when he was little, a task assigned to him by his father. Interestingly, The character 根 (root) runs through several names in our family. I didn’t think much of it as a kid, but now I realize it was a quiet facilitation of tying identity to nature, of rooting us through small, consistent care. When I say “I” in this poem, I also mean him. Through this poem, I’ve learned that “going outside” can also mean looking inward—into what’s been passed down, what still grows even when it’s quiet. My hope is that readers come away thinking about the roots in their own lives—not just where they came from, but what still anchors them, even now.