Red radish.
White radish.
The Latin lovers of the garden,
bundled and private in the soil,
the long and short of shapes
and skins of fire and snow.
Yet,
within the circumference
of their fibrous form,
both warm in the same way.
1971
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I love radishes, the stinging heat, the texture, the shape. Always have. Still do. As a kid my cohorts and I on summer nights would raid gardens for the thrill of radishes. It was a whole if not wholesome experience; feeling the radishes brief resistance as they gave up ground, rubbing the dirt off as best we could, then biting into the tuber and feeling the rush of hot juice against our tongue. The mischief of the theft and the heat of the radish was a delightful way for eight year old boys to buck against the proscriptions of the adult world with all of its ‘don’ts’ and ‘shouldn’ts’.
Why ‘Latin lovers’? Radish comes from the Latin ‘radix’ which gives us ‘radical’ and root’. Latin lovers are regarded as ‘hot.’
And, is there something rooted in our human nature that drives us to break rules?