0011 Scrubbing Carrots Poem by Michael Shepherd

Every Friday, a happy smiling man
who says he’s a mixture of Spain, Trinidad and England
delivers a bag of organic vegetables
and a bag of organic fruit, and
it’s a bit like a child’s Christmas bran-tub adventure –
some strange vegetables I’ve never seen before
and would never have dared to buy;
or eat, if I found them growing in the garden…

but it’s worth it for the carrots alone –
they taste, well, OK, like carrots used to taste..
and each week, they come from a different grower, so
they arrive clean and smooth one week,
clotted with earth another, but
as Rilke might say, rich with carrot-ness..

and I clean them with a respect which they
and the sheer living greenness of the greens
and other vegetables naturally demand of me
so that vegetable-cleaning
which used to be a chore done with attention
only at half strength, is now something more -

and in this mood, almost overlooked small great miracles of life
just happen of themselves –
two weeks ago, I watched amazed
as my two hands of themselves
devised a new way of cleaning carrots –
the hands reversed their roles: left hand
now held the scouring pad, diagonally,
and the right hand spiralled the carrot
in the pad… and lo! those etched horizontal lines
of dirt were perfectly removed..

and the isness of the carrot
and the isness of its servant
were together one silent song
where, it seemed,
the forgotten met the remembered
and rejoiced.