Friday, November 02, 2012

Sonnet sequence XII

XII. Red Thorns

The field is red with fruit, blood drawn by prickles
sharp as barbed-wire stings, from calloused hands
stained red as their harvest. Raspberry pickers
have gone now, leaving field and produce stand
to scarlet sunset. Red rows stretch out, endless,
limned in the last light, etched with furrows of pain.
Stoop labor at its hardest, its most mindless:
unredeemed suffering among the red-fruit canes.
They work the field as hard as they are able
each day, soak aching hands, and then to bed.
The rows lie silent in dusk, while overhead
wind and fatigue dance. Telephone cables
sway in the breeze. A figure hangs there, adorned
with a scarlet crown of raspberry thorns.

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside

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