Memoirs Of A Spinach-Picker

They called the place Lookout Farm.

Back then, the sun

Didn't go down in such a hurry. How it

Lit things, that lamp of the Possible!

Wet yet

Lay over the leaves like a clear cellophane,

A pane of dragonfly wing, when they left me

With a hundred bushel baskets on the edge

Of the spinach patch.

Bunch after bunch of green

Upstanding spinach-tips wedged in a circle—

Layer on layer, and you had a basket

Irreproachable as any lettuce head,

Pure leafage. A hundred baskets by day's end.

Sun and sky mirrored the green of the spinach.

In the tin pail shaded by yellow paper

Well-water kept cool at the start of the rows.

The water had an iron taste, and the air,

Even, a tang of metal.

Day in, day out,

I bent over the plants in my leather-kneed

Dungarees, proud as a lady in a sea

Of prize roses, culling the fullest florets;

My world pyramided with laden baskets.

I'd only to set one foot in wilderness—

A whole sea of spinach-heads leaned to my hand.