That was my father’s yield one summer
from just three carefully tended plants.
Waste not, want not.
 
So we ate zucchini provencale,
(my mother fond of French fancification),
zucchini bread (of course), zucchini cake,
 
spaghetti with zucchini sauce,  
scrambled eggs with zucchini,  
zucchini pancakes, zucchini pickles.
 
Dressed in identical rompers
sewn by my mother,
my sister and I were sent forth
 
with baskets of zucchini,
charged with ringing neighbors’ bells
to offer a zucchini gift.
 
Tense with zucchini dread,
once we fled before the door could open,
leaving the zucchini behind on the porch,
 
and never told our zucchini guilt.  


© by Claudia Mills.
Used with the author’s permission.