Farmers’ market
Though the brown bags of organic rice
dwindle and cost us um olho da cara bananas
are stacked in full cornucopia: the green
the yellow and the aging in their encroaching
stains of brown just perfect for the penelopes
who perch in waiting in our own backyard.
Mangoes are here in defiant heaps anxious to
show off their succulence avocados sit like
a healthy capsule of the local on their curvy bottoms
while broccolis curl in shrunken plummage.
Inside their jagged armor the artichoke
hearts are hardening to the humans who juggle
price vs. taste tomatoes have been
squeezed and picked through and left to leak
a thinning blood into the bottom of their boxes
and there’s not much lettuce or cucumber with this
rainfall in its coming and goings spurts of too much
and months of too little. Like any latecomer
I shuffle remainders the die-hard apples
the weathered strawberries and the thinning
mounds of onion and garlic pure staples of flavor
for our steaming dinners as the cold months head in:
moments of sharing our darkest fears
our treasured acquaintance with truce and peace
our shelter - for now or forever ? - from
deprivation.
