Blind Man’s Buff

Who’s there? I am.
Where from? A place dark in earth’s bed.
First wrapped, then sloughed,
coming away in fragile brown paper layers.

Then defused
swollen
silken
still-born.

I peeped out and saw myself:
a prize won at the coconut shy
resting between forms.
This, I surmised,

with its crocodile tears,
with its legless and bald old man’s pate, its rings,
its crescents and grudges and slices
this is onion. For the moment.

This is when the fork
nudges at my not-as-firm-as-it-looks flesh
and finds me yet
protesting my fate.

So I resisted and clung
clothed in leather in the teething allotment gardens
mournful being sown and grown
and eaten up and sown...

Make your own onion

I

Glue two halves, four quarters,
or approximately eight
three-dimensional crescents

Decoupage crisp layers
of fragile brown paper.
Cherish, burnish with ochre.

Plug with string fibres
dust with dry earth
taper, make a wick

Do not
ignite



II

Inflate a small balloon with Plaster-of-Paris

glaze with crackle finish, hide underground.


Pull down chill of winter damp, introduce spring:

a ‘grow your own pearl’ sprung from the dark

19 March 2009

Knowing Onions

We call this a leek -
we ditch the green, eat the white -
not a green onion.

Likewise this spring onion.

My American cousin

3rd February, 2009