White Pumpkins

A few days ago, I finally cut up my little white pie pumpkins that I've been using since October in various Martha Stewart decorating schemes around the house. As you can see in the above photograph, from Halloween to Thanksgiving they were out on the front porch. Look closely and you can also see Beaumont just inside the door, watching me take the picture: Meow! May I come outside too? No!

After Thanksgiving, I brought them all inside to sit demurely underneath one of our Christmas trees for a few weeks (we ate the orange ones up right away). Since then, the white pumpkins have spent the rest of the winter, along with the 50 lbs of grapefruit from the high school band fundraiser, in our sunroom, where the temperature is just right for storing fresh fruit. However, March has arrived, we're down to a mere four grapefruits, and the sun room is getting warmer by the day, now that the sun has begun to shine again.

At last, I was forced to admit that the white pumpkins have seen their day. A couple had to go straight to the compost heap, but all the others were in perfect shape. Gerry hacked them open with a machete / Houdini knife, and we scooped out the seeds for roasting, then pureed the rest. In fact, this very evening, we are having pumpkin - blueberry cake, a very healthy dessert, made with graham flour and frozen blueberries from last summer. Remember?

Wish you were to have a slice, along with some Earl Grey Green Tea and a little poetry:

Pumpkin Eater
I'm no trouble.
Honest to God I'm not.
I'm not

the kind of woman
who telephones in the middle of the night,
-who told you that?-
splitting the night like machete.
Before and after. After. Before.
No, no, not me.
I'm not

the she who slings words bigger than rocks,
sharper than Houdini knives,
verbal Molotovs.

The one who did that-yo no fui-
that wasn't me.

I'm no hysteric,
terrorist,
emotional anarchist.

I keep inside a pumpkin shell.
There I do very well.

Shut a blind eye to where
my pumpkin-eater roams.

I keep like fruitcake.
Subsist on air.

Not a worry nor care.
Please.
I'm free for the taking
as the eyes of Saint Lucy.
No trouble at all.

I swear, I swear, I swear...

poem by Sandra Cisneros (b 1954)
American / Hispanic Writer
from her collection Loose Woman: Poems (1995)

White Pumpkins & Pink Poinsettias