I DON’T ‘GO ORGANIC’ OFTEN, BUT WHEN I DO

I DON’T ‘GO ORGANIC’ OFTEN, BUT WHEN I DO

I DON’T ‘GO ORGANIC’ OFTEN, BUT WHEN I DO

I don’t ‘go organic’ often, but when I do
cash registers explode, shop assistants lurch back
beneath furry earflaps,
                    the wild beasts knitted on Iroquois sweaters
                                                                      leap up,
their hunters let fall their bows,
                    returning, at all fleet, to tented encampments of their tribe
to sit wordlessly
          with the Great Spirit.
                    Cram up my basket, I say, for I am not all water -
though hydration may form the signal part
          of any halfway harmonious regime.
I am told that amaranth binds a higher protein content
than the equivalent weight
                    of any goodly-made walrus.
Pass me that cantaloupe, farmed in biotic growing methods
by organo-wonks with expensive recreational habits.
                                                                      I wish to pay
largely for it, if you would be so kind,
          and desire
little change from a high denomination banknote.
                    Only stay, stay your hand there          on its surface
to let my own against the edge of yours, tender, as in a slow wooing.
Fresh we were and wild,
                              O yes wild, I say, were we,
          implacable huntress of the free-range legume.
And what does it come to in any sort of natural currency?
                    A single meal for two, free of human taint,
the feel of cool, green skin beneath your palm touched along mine,
and a further difficulty - I see that, scourge of the brassicas -
          I do not always know what I am doing.