Fall Onions
Onion’s skin very thin,
Mild winter coming in;
Onion’s skin thick and tough,
Coming winter cold and rough.
—Gardener’s Rhyme
Take this one on the cutting board —
it sneers at the knife, gives up its skin
one smidge at a time.
I’m late-autumnal too, and so thin-skinned
I swathe myself against the chill.
Whatever’s nicking away at my layers
is doing it mildly, fragment by fragment,
slowly prepping me for the winter stew pot.
O for a thick covering to save me
from this niggling disintegration.
And when the season’s cold and rough
let a big knife strip it off
suddenly and whole.
PATRICIA ZYLIUS is the author of the chapbook Once a Vibrant Field. Read more.
"Fall Onions" previously appeared in SWIMM.