The Broccoli Debate

Tell Bush and Obama

They won’t find wild Broccoli
if they reverted to nature,
would have to pick a different plant
to polarise their stands.

Once there was wild Kale,
such a mean-flowering green
we had to entice its buds out,
batch by batch, chucking most away.

So we always saved the sweetest
kept going, crop by crop,
until we’d grown indoor forests
of green-trunked mini trees.

What does it mean that Broccoli’s
a plant humanity evolved?
Would they hate or favourite it now,
choose forced health or freedom?

What does Broccoli mean to me?
It blooms in such shadows,
a squat symbol of mean squabbles,
while the true trees die.