Let’s carry some food home in winter!

Let’s buy some groceries from this shopkeeper, a bottle of milk, an egg, a candy, a loaf of bread!

How would you like to eat them? one by one! Where will you store them? in your refrigerator! In your wooden box! Do whatever you wish, It’s all up to you!

But enjoy this poem today by Margaret Atwood, published in 1969, with the title, “Carrying home food in winter.”

I walk uphill through the snow

hard going

brown paper bag of groceries

balanced low on my stomach,

heavy, my arms stretching

to hold it turn all tendon.

Do we need this paper bag

my love, do we need this bulk

of peels and cores, do we need

these bottles, these roots

and bit of cardboard

to keep us floating

as on a raft

above the snow I sink through?

The skin creats

islands of warmth

in winter, in summer

the islands of coolness.

The mouth performs

a similar deception.

I say I will transform

this egg into a muscle

this bottle into an act of love.

This onion will become a motion.

this grapefruit

will become a thought.

Margaret Atwood

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