Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Vegetables Populate the Poetry of Palate

Wow! Vegetables! I can do a happy dance for I love all vegetables. I think most poets do, although vegetables do not a poet make--not out of me anyway.

"Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds—
the thick tangle, the openings, and the pink turf,
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold—"
Walt Whitman

Even Virgil, from way back when, got into the act and made a salad in Aeneid.

"There flourish'd star-wort, and the branching beet.
The sorrel acid, and the mallow sweet,
The skirret, and the leek's aspiring kind,
The noxious poppy—quencher of the mind!
Salubrious sequel of a sumptuous board,
The lettuce, and the long huge-bellied gourd;"

Spinach even got to Sylvia Plath, piercing through her melancholy.
"Bunch after bunch of green
Upstanding spinach-tips wedged in a circle"

Popeye would be swooning.

Although spinach can get my heart beating, eggplant, zucchini, peppers, peas, legumes and the rest follow very closely. I assure you, no one ever needed to push vegetables on me, and this has nothing to do with Dr. Oz or his fancy word phytochemicals. I was always deeply in love with the veggies. Even the lowly Brussels sprouts, neglected and unappreciated until recently, have inched close to the others after I learned how to spice and bake them.

Veggies, the earth-grown feast. How do I love thee, let me count the ways, even if I can't get to all the ways.

Vegetables, that burst of color, so green, so red, so yellow, so purple, so orange--sautéed, roasted, baked, steamed, or raw, big-hearted, with flat or stringy leaves, exotic or commonplace--an oasis too cool for words; I pair well with them all.

I even adore Jalapeno peppers, although I doubt I can take a big bite out of a perfectly shiny red one, but I have never tried it, either. On the other hand, I am getting excited over that idea while I write this. After all, what do you expect from a woman who used to eat lemons when she was a baby?

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Prompt: Today is National Eat your Vegetables Day in the United States, but everyone can play. What is your favorite veggie and your least favorite veggie?