The Giant Onion

The nightmare is of an onion that gets larger

and larger with every layer you peel away.

The more you dig your nails in to it the larger

it gets swelling to an impossible size.

You do this for a thousand years.

One day you wake up to begin yet another day

of peeling away  yet another layer of this gigantic onion

only to realize it was never about the onion,

but rather the tears of sorrow and joy,

that you shed while peeling it,

over so many  thousands of years.

Derek Earl Houghton