Song to Onions

Judith Huth

Because sometimes you need a poem like this, to run through your head, then read aloud, and then chuckle at.  Aaaand now I'm hungry.


Song to Onions by Roy Blount Jr.

They improve everything, pork chops to soup,
And not only that but each onion's a group.

Peel back the skin, delve into tissue
And see how an onion has been blessed with issue.

Every layer produces an ovum:
You think you've got three then you find you've got fovum.

Onion on on—
Ion on onion they run,
Each but the smallest one some onion's mother:
An onion comprises a half-dozen other.

In sum then an onion you could say is less
Than the sum of its parts.
But then I like things that more are than profess—
In food and the arts.

Things pungent, not tony.
I'll take Damon Runyon
Over Antonioni—
Who if an i wanders becomes Anti-onion.
I'm anti-baloney.

Although a baloney sandwich would
Right now, with onions, be right good.

And so would sliced onions,
Chewed with cheese,
Or onions chopped and sprinkled
Over black-eyed peas:

Black-eyed,
grey-gravied,
absorbent of essences,
eaten on New Year's Eve
peas.