This Pumpkin is a Reproach

This pumpkin is a reproach.
It came fat and round and perfect -
In July!

My little one sowed the seeds
In the side yard
Near where my husband dumps motor oil
On the dirt.

We didn’t water.
It never rained.
And yet the vines grew thick and ropey
And spilled onto the cement path.
The shade-giving leaves reached
Monstrous proportions.

Its fecundity is obscene.
This pumpkin didn’t even need one thing from us.
How did it mine such flagrant life
From this poor dead patch of earth?

This pumpkin is a reproach.
It knows I don’t know what to do with it.
It knows what a sorry husbandwoman I am.

If we carve it, it will rot in the heat.
I don’t want to eat it
(It grew where the cats pee.
Possibly it absorbed transmission fluid
From the dumping ground.)

The acid will hurt my hands
If I penetrate its orange cavity.
The worms will die if we throw it
In the compost.

This pumpkin is a miracle,
A food staple that thrived
Untended in the polluted ground.
It is the Platonic ideal of a pumpkin,
Sassy and plump and assured of its
Halloween cuteness.

It has now begun its tenure on a little-used lawn table.
When it turns it will go in the trash can.