Onions

Onions

...are underappreciated.

Sure we like onions,
but few of us love 'em
like those lovers of garlic
or the chocoholics.

I summon the onion
to mind, heart and gut,
because there may be
no more perfect metaphor
for the spiritual life.

Day by day we peel away
the layers of our being.
Each layer is a bit smaller,
and strangely more fragrant.

We may never reach the center.
But even if we could manage
there'd be no great reward,
only more onion.

---

For an Apple is in itself a little Universe;
the Seed, hotter than the other parts thereof, is its Sun,
which diffuses about it self that natural Heat
which preserves its Globe: And in the Onion,
the Germ is the little Sun of that little World,
which vivifies and nourishes
the vegetative Salt of that little mass.
~ Cyrano de Bergerac

---