Beans

A musical poem for Valentine’s Day

Beans

I have just eaten Mexican food
with work friends for a Valentine’s Day lunch
and my digestive system is singing

(meaning my body dislikes
fried food and fermented gas),
which is saying beans are a musical fruit,

but the scientist in me wants to use
the correct botany term and
declares the bean a legume and a seed,

not a fruit, that the part of the bean
plant that IS the fruit is actually
the pod that holds the beans,

the seeds we eat and chew and
digest poorly, that ferment in our gut
whose microbes release gas as a result,

so in my weekly work Zoom meeting
just after we return from lunch
I am thankful for the mute button

and my private office and the nearby
bathroom and the fact that half
of my office mates are working from home

because I am surrounded by empty rooms
so my belly may freely gargle
and belch and…