October 2020
Bio Note: I didn't get serious about writing poems until my 40s. Now I'm obsessed--as my patient
husband (and our not-so-patient beagles) will tell you. I've come to believe that poetry is the soul-language
humanity secretly craves. Now more than ever.
Carnival Squash
Balanced on the counter above the sink:
a little planet, spattered yellow
and army green—with drizzles of orange
down the seams of its time zones.
It says security. “I will keep for a month
or more—a trustworthy sidekick. Use me
as doorstop, paperweight, centerpiece, softball.
I come from the field and am humble.”
Yet something about the sleek, umbilical
clip of its stem is suggestive. Its shape, imperial
as a crown (or the peaked dome of a minaret)
is dense with meaning. How did mere soil
birth such a perfectly odorless container?
You imagine it sliced in half, slow-roasted
until the tender threads can be scooped cleanly
out of their slippery paper, into a fuming bowl.
Only then, you think, will it give up its scent.
For the time being, it serves as a reminder
of how one gets by—the future’s wet seed
nesting in the hard fruit of forbearance.
©2020 David Southward
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -FF