My Onions, My Opinions
“Understand therefore, that the LORD thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness. For thou art a stiffnecked people.” Deut. 9:6
When Auden said, “About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters,” he meant my parents.
They went about it loud and long.
My mother lost her father when she was twenty,
married mine when she was twenty-one
& practiced a vinegar tongue.
He cursed the weather and my attitude.
But they knew how to grow a garden.
When my husband plants onions, he doesn’t set
them deep enough. They sit there growing
like little pots sticking out of the ground. That’s wrong.
They need to grow deep in the earth. So later when you
pull up a green onion, the useless layers
sluff off.
I never knew how they worshiped,
I never knew if they prayed.
I sat on the floor cross-legged like an Indian
but as stiffnecked as an Israelite.
I do, however, plant onions right.
