Your Daily Poem

This site exists for one purpose only: to help dispel the ugly and absolutely untrue myth that poetry is boring. Granted, a lot of poetry is boring, but you won't find it here. At Your Daily Poem, you'll find poetry that is touching, funny, provocative, inspiring, uplifting, and surprising. It may punch you in the gut, it may bring tears to your eyes, it may make you laugh out loud, but it most assuredly will not bore you! Visit our home page every day to see a different poem.

Poetry on YDP—by poets living and long dead, famous to completely unknown--is specially selected for accessibility and appeal. Thanks so much for visiting—and remember: a poem a day keeps the doldrums away!

Nosferatu's Garden
by
Ed Werstein

If Nosferatu were a gardener
he would raise beets
and beets alone,
fang-rooted Romanian blood bulbs,
vampire of vegetables.
Sucking redness from radish veins
leaving its innards colorless.
Rutabagas, potatoes, parsnips
are no match for its red-robbing wiles.
Only the longer rooted carrot
has managed through the centuries
to cleave to a bit of orangeness.
There is an eastern European wives tale
claiming that before the beet bit
you could get blood from a turnip.

Bubbling in a borscht bowl,
the beet could sustain our fabled count
through those long cold damselless nights.

This poem first appeared in Vampyr Verse (Popcorn Press, 2009)
and Verse Wisconsin (Spring 2010).
Used here with the author’s permission.

Ed Werstein is a retired union activist and employment counselor who published his first poem at the age of 60 when, as he says, "my muse awoke and dragged herself
out of bed." A resident of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Ed is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and the Hartford Avenue Poets. Learn more about him at edwerstein.com.

Nancy Dymond:
Your poem sent chills up the wilted spines of my newly picked Swiss chard. In this oppressive heat all shivers are welcome. Fang you so much!
Posted 07/28/2011 08:22 PM

LindaCrosfield:
Clever indeed! Had some 'fang-rooted Romanian blood bulbs' for dinner only last night. I'll never eat 'em again without thinking of your poem, Ed.
Posted 07/28/2011 09:44 AM

Janet Leahy:
This "Vampire of Vegetables" looks so innocent on the salad bar! Clever poem, thanks Ed.
Posted 07/28/2011 07:54 AM

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