creative vegetables

I went to a creative writing course today. The tutor had brought in a vegetable.

I explained that I might have more success photographing it than writing about it but ...




... perhaps not.

I thought it looked like a sea creature and tried to write a poem about that. Interestingly he did the same and managed something really good. We had the same image in our minds but he had the facility with words and imagination to turn it into something really interesting. Mine was so pedestrian. I finished quickly and couldn't find anything else to improve what I had written.

I then quickly wrote something else having smelt it.

What do you call it?
I don't know
How do you cook it?
You boil it
How mundane
Yet this ugly green delicacy smells of an oriental bazaar
It should be amongst spices and herbs
Fried delicately in olive oil
Displayed on a bed of safron flavoured rice
And served with kindness
To the person who had the imagination to buy it




I'm not sure that these quickly taken photographs show any more imagination than the words. Interestingly from the photographs it no longer looks to me like a sea creature with barnacles and aged knowledge, but now
- a mouse.