[Critique Group 2] Leonard's submission for critique on 4/18/17

[Tuchyner5 at aol.com]

The Onion and the Cabbage  
by 
Leonard Tuchyner  
An onion grew near a railroad track. 
How it was so, he would never know. 
He didn’t care too much about that, 
though once in a while he wished he could chat 
of certain things which onions hold dear 
and other themes about which they care. 
One cool late Spring evening, 
he spied a tiny black speck 
borne on a swift blustery breeze, 
in the dimming rosy twilight 
which slid and dived out of the sky, 
landing close to the onion’s roost. 
“It seems like some sort of seed to me, 
but from what breed of plant could it be?”  
That Spring night came the cool season’s  rains. 
In the dawning light of morning, 
he saw the seed had been swallowed  
by a wash of blackish soil. 
He wished upon a fading star 
that this germ of life would root and grow, 
to ease his lonely solitude. 
And so his wishes came to be, 
though all was not perfection. 
This neighbor was not an onion. 
He hoped they’d share some interests, 
not like the wild weeds and grasses, 
who had very different concerns 
than did Vidalia onion breeds. 
“What are you?”  Onion asked the seedling 
“I think that I am a cabbage, 
but I could be almost anything.” 
“I should expect you’d know what you are!” 
“Well, I could be a Brussels sprout, 
a broccoli or a cauli. . . 
flower, that is.” 
“When will you know?” 
he said, wiggling his pointed leaves  
and exuding onion vapors, 
a sure sign of irritation. 
“Well, we’ll just have to wait and see. 
I am doing the best I can, 
you know. 
Anyway, do you have a name?” 
“No one was here to name me. 
I’ve always been on my own. 
So you see, I only know me as ‘Me’.” 
“Tell you what, 
I’ll give you a name, if you’ll do the same,” 
She said, flapping her pseudo-leaves  coquettishly. 
The onion’s leaves turned a darker green. 
“Very well, I’ll call you Cauli.”  
“Then I’ll call you Oney.” 
Cauli grew in the freshness of Spring. 
She turned out to be a cabbage, 
a beautiful, scarlet red cabbage, 
despite her name of Cauli Flower. 
The two became the best of friends. 
Their love blossomed through Spring and  Autumn, 
even though they were so variant, 
their contrasts required adjustments. 
They learned thus from one another. 
In deepest despair, Oney learned 
that his Cauli would go to seed, 
then pass away in Winter’s cruel chill, 
While onions rest beneath the earth, 
below their brown, withered spiky leaves, 
to rise again in next year’s Spring, 
bigger and sweeter than ever. 
Oney would watch over her brood of seeds, 
to greet her seedlings in their season, 
tell them of their loving mother, 
and how Cauli’s leaving broke his  heart.
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