Field and Fen Breaks out into a poem

In the kitchen, with a big bag of spanish onions, partly for dye purposes, the outer skins, that is, and the rest for the freezer, I came over with a poem.  I wrote this right then, and have sent it, in response to listener invitations, to wnyc.com in celebration of National Poetry Month.  

Long time since I committed a poem, so I thought I'd share:

Today I brought home a whole bag of onions
ready to collect the papery golden skins
for the dye bag
and the food for the freezer to preserve
as memory, again, thrusts, fresh,
the onion-worked smell of my mother's hands
at my child's eye level, cracked and broken by
a lifetime of labor, many children,
no time to dye
barely time to live

Liz Adams, in honor of Lizzie Ryder