There is an onion by the stove

brown-papered, seeming unconcerned

smug, really, if you come to think

of its audacious round bum at rest

 

Audacious, to just sit there, by the stove

so near the fire, so nonchalant and calm

Ha – is there anything more patient? or

more self-centred than an onion?

 

There is an onion by the stove, love

really, just there, not even in a bowl

as if taunting the pans, the burners

the frenzied flail of spatulas

 

Taunting, with its papered curves

any pretension of perfected flights

of culinary fancy; it comes down

to this, emissary of earth, of soul

 

While the poet crafts ephemera

in eggwhite, whips chocolate into

bacchanals, commits carnage unrelenting

sieves and bastes, deglazes, tastes

 

Nothing, nothing in all the craft at hand

so sums the lowly nature of that

which most sustains humanity, as to point

like a sage, and say no more than this:

 

There is an onion by the stove.

(Stroll of Poets 30/30 2019, Day 28) Image by Robert-Owen-Wahl on pixabay.com