Patricia Zylius

Many of my poems germinate from things in the natural world, often my messy but forgiving garden. I almost never write about food, which, after all, does come from plants and, if you eat them, animals. I also write about this aging suit I walk around in, my body, now in its eighth decade. Those all came together in this poem. You know how sometimes an onion peels easily, the skin thick, sturdy, and cooperative? Other times, the skin is thin, sticks to the layers below it with frustrating stubbornness, and detaches in little bits. It was one of those recalcitrant skins I was working at when I remembered reading about onions predicting weather. I don’t know how true the saying is, but it was a fun idea to play with.