As I write this, the sun is shining down onto my husband’s onion and shallot harvest that is spread out across our patio, so I didn’t need to put much thought into my choice of this week’s poem. To say he’s a keen gardener is an understatement. (This picture shows just a small sample of this year’s crop.)

Some people might decide to reduce the size of their allotment, once half the members of the household have left home (in our case, a son and daughter). But though he’s always been good at maths (unlike me), he’s not one to do things by half, so instead of reducing his very successful production of vegetables, he has now acquired a second plot so that he can grow even more.

Not that I’m complaining, of course, and actually I do appreciate the year-long supply of delicious fresh veg, but occasionally the excess can prompt a poetic rant.

Storing Onions
The boiler room is out of bounds to her -
a Bluebeard’s chamber crammed with hanging rows
of surplus vegetables.

She used to cook him soups and casseroles
chopping the slippery white rings, half blinded.
It stings her eyes now, just to think of them.

Regardless, he produces more each year.
She watches him in silence from her window
unloading brimming boxes from his car.

He always waits till every plump green stem
fades pale as straw and flops exhausted
onto the nurtured soil of his allotment.

Back home he spreads a dust sheet on the terrace
and tumbles out his harvest
gloating over each brown globe in turn

rubbing it between his thumbs
fumbling through loose layers
brittle as wings of winter moths or flies.

He loops the twine around each fractured stalk
and tugs , to stifle any flow of juice
without quite severing the stub of neck

then calls her to admire his handiwork -
bunch after bunch of dangling heads
with grains of earth clinging to wiry hair.

She knows they’ll hang till swarms of tiny flies
feast on sterile shoots and rotting husks
while rust-brown liquid drips onto the floor.

I wrote this poem about ten years ago and as well as appearing in my own collection Single Travellers, it was first published in Weyfarers 2000. Since my husband (fortunately) has some understanding of poetic licence, he doesn’t take this personally, and in fact it’s his favourite poem of mine.

As it’s quite a dramatic narrative, it’s a good one to recite, and I’ve used it in performances with Late Shift. (I’ll be posting more about Late Shift soon)