Ron Padgett, the poems of

Walking around the Farmer's Market at Fort Mason, I wondered why I liked the poems of Ron Padgett so much.

I wasn't really shopping for anything. It was early Sunday morning and foggy. The stands were just opening, and I was walking around mostly to keep warm.

The peaches looked pretty good, so I bought some. Lea Ann picked some romaine & butter lettuce & red & yellow bell peppers.

Padgett's poems are light, even the poems about time & mortality on which he writes more and more and which are on currently on display in his latest book, How Long (Coffee House Press, 2011). They're neither fruits or vegetables, but if you gather them all in a white plastic bag and bring them home and chop them up, you'll have a very satisfying meal that could be served with a nice white wine or a cold glass Perrier and a slice of lime.

One farmer had eggplant about as big as elongated tennis balls and of an rosy red pearled countenance,  smaller than the run-of-the-mill eggplant, which is about as big as an elongated Nerf football and almost jet-black. He said they tasted better than the typical eggplant, that he liked to slice them open and stuff them with a little onion, rice and sausage, and that 2 or 3 of them made a nice dinner.