This poem was created by the poets of Barelas Share Your Care, in Albuquerque, New Mexico and poet Michelle Otero on February 6, 2012.
The model poems Otero used were “Ode to the Onion” by Pablo Neruda and “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls” by Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow.
As this is part of the APP Spanish language project she also used the Dicho: "Del dicho al hecho hay
gran trecho." (From the word to the act, there’s quite a long path.)
Otero writes about the session, "Participants raised and lowered their arms like waves as we
read 'The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls.' They laughed when I introduced Neruda’s 'Ode to the Onion.' I shared with them the names of other Neruda Odes ('Ode to My Socks,' 'Ode to
the Dictionary,' 'Ode to the Apple') and then passed around five large onions I
had brought in as props. Many remembered growing onions in their gardens.
We passed an onion as a sort of talking stick when writing
our onion poem. Many of the participants rubbed the skin between their fingers
or smoothed their hands over the round surface. Having something to hold and
respond to led to some creative lines of poetry and inspired one woman to sing
a song she’d learned as a child, changing the lyrics to fit our poem ('Lonely
little onion in a turnip patch…').
Onion
This onion feels
like a hand.
It’s a nice onion,
as big as a baseball.
We grew lots of
onions in West Virginia,
lonely little onion
in a turnip patch
Está bonita esta cebolla.
¿Quién sabe qué
diría?
En Cuahtemoc tienen
cebolla, melon.
It feels very thin,
almost like from a tree.
If this onion could
talk, it would say,
“I’m getting so
hungry, I’m gonna eat myself.”
It’s pretty because
it’s so round.
If this onion could
talk, it would say,
“Don’t eat me!”
The onion feels
hard, it smells real bad.
Onions have a sweet
taste.
They enhance the
flavor of other foods.
It’s good when it
grows.
It goes to the
children.
I was following my
children.
I don’t what you’d
call this onion, but it’s round and cold.
If this onion could
talk, it would say,
“If you take my
outer skin off, I’m gonna make you cry.”
This onion feels
like eggplant, smooth, really smooth.
I knew the names of
all the onions. I forgot.
This onion’s name is
Smelling Good,
brings back memories
of my mom cooking dinner,
chopping onions, a
good bowl of onion soup.
It smells like
vinegar. And they cut it. It makes you cry.
Onion heals a cold.
Just cut it open,
chop it up, put some
Caro syrup on it and eat it.
Yum!
Onions probably grow
in the ground,
but that thing
sticking out feels like a leaf
so maybe it’s a
tree.
