I've pulled the last of the year's young onions. <br />The garden is bare now. The ground is cold, <br />brown and old. What is left of the day flames <br />in the maples at the corner of my <br />eye. I turn, a cardinal vanishes. <br />By the cellar door, I wash the onions, <br />then drink from the icy metal spigot. <br /> <br />Once, years back, I walked beside my father <br />among the windfall pears. I can't recall <br />our words. We may have strolled in silence. But <br />I still see him bend that way-left hand braced <br />on knee, creaky-to lift and hold to my <br />eye a rotten pear. In it, a hornet <br />spun crazily, glazed in slow, glistening juice. <br /> <br />It was my father I saw this morning <br />waving to me from the trees. I almost <br />called to him, until I came close enough <br />to see the shovel, leaning where I had <br />left it, in the flickering, deep green shade. <br /> <br />White rice steaming, almost done. Sweet green peas <br />fried in onions. Shrimp braised in sesame <br />oil and garlic. And my own loneliness. <br />What more could I, a young man, want.<br /><br />Li-Young Lee<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/eating-alone/
