Burn and Dodge

Ode to Ginger

 ode to ginger Horn-shaped body, Srnga-vera, from the tropics of South Asia I have never beheld your greeny flowers only your tan potbelly with its many stunted appendages. You have rooted out my pain before: when my wrists and fingers throbbed from too much fluting of lettered keys I turned to you sliced and boiled in water plunged my hands in the pot up to my wrists among your bobbling chunks as hot as I could stand. Scalding drawing out cricks and creaks aches with your thousand needle-stings into wet fire. Now, when I have need of fruit and lute what else can lift me into song but carrots sweetest firmest of ruddy roots and you, ginger, with your pungencejuiced whose burning cools the blood. I’ll drink up now so impinging griefs, raging despairs, all muddling worries might hit your rapids in their long blue craft and singe themselves out of me. ...