YOU TAKE THE ORCHIDS

One life for each of us.
That’s how it works.
I’ve got mine, and you’ve got yours.
How I love turnip greens,
mustard greens, and black-eyed peas,
anything that smells and tastes of earth.
Choose, if you want to, refined pleasures
smooth and bland, elegant on the plate.
Let me have some straight talk, blunt,
about the way the world really is.
You take the woman from the university
who has nothing more to learn.
I’ll have a small bunch of those marigolds.
You take the orchids.