Nosferatu's Garden
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.
Nosferatu's Garden by Ed Weirstein
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
wersted@juno.com
This poem was first published in the
anthology, Vampyr Verse, 2009, by
Popcorn Press, Elkhorn, WI
Used here with the author’s permission.