Strawberries
A big barn squats confident
in sprawling concrete, tin walls
looming tall, mirroring morning sun
too feverish for this early in June, a barn
wide-mouthed and spewing gravel,
paving the way for the trucks that come
in the middle of the night,
taking away the calves, sleep-muddled
and slow, to be sliced onto plates
of fine white porcelain
between bold flatware and Bordeaux
sweating in candlelight.
But underneath its heavy heat
lies an old field, and a team
of horses standing fresh-eyed
in the mist of an early June morning,
manes sun-brushed and silken, they wait,
noses velveteen and whispering,
watching a man in a faded black hat
bending over rows of strawberries on straw,
fingers probing the leaves, fingers
skilled and stained with berries and earth,
fingers that know the land
like his own skin.
He steps gently
over rows of knee-high peppers and
baby-faced tomatoes flushing and swelling,
carrying boxes of berries
to the roadside stand, berries
with skin still cool from night dew,
down the narrow path that crawls, yawning,
under crooked pines, and as he walks he scans
the land, the way of the wind, the way
the grass bends and returns, watching
with eyes that laugh every now and then
when no one is looking.
By the roadside stand a car waits, idling,
it’s a stand he built with his own hands
out of scrap lumber, prices
lettered on the backs of old envelopes,
box of berries fifty cents, spring peas sixty five,
radishes fifteen, and lilacs
from the bush by the wash-line no charge
for you, he says, and how are the children,
and there won’t be more berries
until Thursday because
it’s going to storm this evening but,
we need the rain.
Hands raise in farewell and calls of goodwill,
dust lifts from the tires, drifts
over the road, swallowing a faded black hat
trudging back along the yawning footpath
by crooked pines, back to the horses
waiting in June sunshine, back
to young plants in an old field,
and in the distance a truck approaches,
new and shining, gears grinding,
eighteen wheels on the path he is walking,
eighteen wheels turning onto
a wide gravel drive.
They cut the pines down
to make room for the drive.
