Chiefly Concerning the Rutabagas

At the nordic
themed Christmas party
you enjoyed the mashed rutabagas and
the purse of your lips as you did
and the curve of your cheek, your hair
drawn back in the candlelight cause me
to digress
as this
is chiefly concerning the rutabagas

which were once the main commercial crop
in the tiny Danish immigrant town in which I was also raised
and on which I, a schoolboy, did a history project,
interviewing an elderly fellow who used to work
the rutabaga fields. I thought, when I went
to his home to talk to him that he would be glad to wax
nostalgic and warm to the tale,
but it was quite different
he did not remember this topic fondly for some reason.
Athelred was his name, call him Red, and he was unready
to reveal the exciting days of the rutabaga.
Here I had thought
that was the joy of old men,
and so I was deeply disappointed,
but again,
this is chiefly concerning the rutabagas,

of which he did tell this tale:
that when the warehouse where the rutabagas waited
with their purple tops for the trains to take them
to the unsuspecting boys and girls of America--yes,
when it caught fire, the wax, you know, young man
in which they are shipped, to preserve their pale hide,
ran down the streets like a Dansk Pompeii
(I am adding this for poetic effect)
and into the sewers, a very good place for liquid wax,
but when it cooled and stopped the whole town up
people got so sick of rutabagas that they never
wanted to see their pasty white forms again
and so the warehouse stood empty, got old
and romantic enough to interest me
which is why I talked to Red
who, in his younger days would probably
have been equally distracted by
the way your eyes so infuse this air
that when I breathe its warmth
into my lungs it almost stops my breath
(I was going to say like sewers filled
with rutabaga wax,
but that is enough
concerning the rutabagas).