Pumpkins in our time - Poem by Ivan Donn Carswell

For months on end the pumpkins lay at peace,
their parent vines had all but browned and died
although a stubborn tendril here and there had
tried to grow again – glyphosate soon ended
that attempt at insurrection. There were ten
back then, though only nine survived, the unlucky
one caught rot and slowly died, a silent, gravid fate
while yet achieving fame for it will lend it’s genes
without hurrah to grow the batch replacing them.

The nine survivors now sit on the bench inside
the packing shed, they earned their rest out of
the heat and each will have a cleansing bath, be
polished with a brush and buffed until they shine.
In time they will be chosen for the table, used as
soup so thick the ladle stands upright or crusty scones
whose bright and cheery shade delights, or roasted
in the oven pan with juices from the meat, a taste so
sweet and complex in its decadent indecency.

We didn’t breed the pumpkins on our farm,
we let them grow wherever they’ve a mind,
we’re kind and thoughtful (so we think), providing
them with nutrients which were designed for trees,
a drink when thirst inclines and leaves are in a wilt,
placing runners back beneath the shade indeed as
carefully as the like of pumpkin growers might had they
the time, fostering a rare, sublime relationship to reap
rewards which will see more each coming year.
© I.D. Carswell