SELF PRESERVATION, TOO
So, we live our lives in the dark, like onions
stored in the seamless legs of last season’s pantyhose,
held together by flimsy knitted skins, held apart by excuses
and knots, no individual ever really touching another.
With only these navels in between, don’t think
I haven’t seen behind your finely tempered mind
all the way down to the cellar where you hang your ideas.
All those dangling, mangled limbs, nothing more
than lumps and clots lackadaisically waiting for some
vegetable to come along and brush up against them
making the whole onion infantry swing into step
like muffled chimes. Surrounded by cabbages, we are
sworn to secrecy, never telling the bulbs that the battle’s lost,
and that no one’s marching anywhere except closer to decay.
An interesting detail, however, occurred to me today when I posted the image of the onions in their knotted hose--the round onions when placed into the hosiery legs and forced apart by knots formed a kind of repeated pattern of distorted diamond shapes, almost like a mid-century modern abstract piece of visual art!