Tonight I have fallen in love with cauliflower,
the way that it gives itself so completely
to the soup, the way it informs the curry
with nutty sweetness, with bitterness.
I love the way it turns to cream, how it
loses all sense of its former shape
and is still so wholly present.
I know it is foolish, perhaps, to toss around
a word so important as love, to spend it
on a vegetable. No, I tell myself,
it is worse not to fall in love with cauliflower,
worse to pretend that it isn’t a gift,
an invitation to praise. Such simple worship,
a bowl, a spoon, a willing tongue.