Featured Fifty Poetry: Two Grocery Carts

Thomas Jardine resides in Texas and has written poetry for over 44 years. He is the author of two small chapbooks, Virtual White Orchids and The Death of the Young Roofer Man. He likes to write lyrical poetry combining form and sense, and narrative poetry, where story, the subject and the lines gently expound notes on life. Ever fascinated by the integrity between relationships, Thomas concerns much of his writing with what is felt yet rarely expressed.

"Two Grocery Carts" is a metaphor for two grocery carts stuck together, which we all encounter, for two people in love and there is no way to explain why. Two people, together.

Two Grocery Carts

The grocery store, isles of rainbow fruit

and cartoon veggies, has the usual plethora

of shoppers in a business, bathing, or jogging suit,

who examine and press a perfect orange,

size every beet, weigh broccoli,

and check tomato leaves for fringe

and lift apples to look for an aura.

A few don't bother; they shop and casually

choose celery, beans in cans, crackers off-brand,

no list necessary, any wine will do; dry, bland.

You and I are outside, two grocery carts

inextricably coupled, irking those

who yank our handles then analyze parts

of underlying commonality that seldom shows

when other carts, same shape, same day

look exactly alike and easily roll away.

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