Excerpt
Cucumber Fields Crossed by High-Tension Wires
The high-tension spires spike the sky beneath which boys bend to pick from prickly vines the deep-sopped fruit, the rinds green a green sunk in green. They part the plants leaves, reach into the nest, and pull out mother, father, fat Uncle Phil.
The smaller yellow-green children stay, for now. The fruit goes in baskets by the side of the row, every thirty feet or so. By these bushels the boys get paid, in cash, at days end, this summer of the last days of the empire that will become known as the past, adios, then, the ragged-edged beautiful blink.
Copyright © 2001 by Thomas Lux