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, sliced onto plates
of sweating white porcelain
between bold flatware and Bordeaux
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,
whispering, watching
a man in a faded black hat
bending over rows of strawberries on straw,
probing the leaves, fingers skilled
and stained with berries and earth,
fingers that know the land
like his own skin.
He steps over rows
of knee-high peppers and tomatoes
baby-faced and swelling, carrying
the boxes of berries
to the roadside stand, their skin
still cool from the night, down the path
that crawls, narrow and yawning
under crooked pines, as he walks
he scans the land, the play of wind, grass
bending and returning, watching
with eyes that laugh every now and then
when no one is looking.
A car is waiting by the roadside stand,
he built it with his own hands
out of scrap lumber, prices scrawled
on the backs of old envelopes, berries
fifty cents, spring peas sixty five,
radishes fifteen, and lilacs
from the bush by the wash-line, no charge
he says, how are the children, and
there won’t be more berries
until Thursday,
it’s going to storm this evening but
we need the rain.
Hands raise in farewell, dust lifts
from the tires, drifts
over the road, over a faded black hat
trudging back 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 new gravel drive.
They cut the pines down
to make room for the drive.
