Poem 19 - Eating Alone

This is a nice transition-to-fall poem by one of the best poets of the day. It’s the perfect poem for this time of year, the cooler days, the crisp fallen leaves, the hunkering-down feelings as we turn the bend toward winter. I love how this poem celebrates the careful loneliness of eating the last of the summer’s bounty alone.

Eating Alone

Li-Young Lee

I’ve pulled the last of the year’s young onions.

The garden is bare now. The ground is cold,

brown and old. What is left of the day flames

in the maples at the corner of my

eye. I turn, a cardinal vanishes.

By the cellar door, I wash the onions,

then drink from the icy metal spigot.

Once, years back, I walked beside my father

among the windfall pears. I can’t recall

our words. We may have strolled in silence. But

I still see him bend that way—left hand braced

on knee, creaky—to lift and hold to my

eye a rotten pear. In it, a hornet

spun crazily, glazed in slow, glistening juice.

It was my father I saw this morning

waving to me from the trees. I almost

called to him, until I came close enough

to see the shovel, leaning where I had

left it, in the flickering, deep green shade.

White rice steaming, almost done. Sweet green peas

fried in onions. Shrimp braised in sesame

oil and garlic. And my own loneliness.

What more could I, a young man, want.