Prune Harvest by Patricia Wellingham-Jones
Torpid as a slug crawling on concrete,
fuggy cloud wrapped around my sticky limbs,
I sit breathless in September heat.
Watch black-haired men with sun-darkened
skin crawl in their giant machines across Mill Creek bridge
over summer-starved water and algae.
White pickups begin and end the procession.
Next comes a flat-bed loaded with shaker,
then left-wing, right-wing
trays slanted the length of three cars.
When joined like the edges of cupped hands
they catch cascading bodies, plump
and purple dusted with silver.
The prunes tumble into wood bins banded
in steel, stacked, stacked again
for their journey to drying.
Through the dirt and dust of harvest
orchard to orchard, owner to owner,
the procession of metal and migrants
marches up the Sacramento Valley.
In January I chop dried prunes, smell
a sudden gust of hot wind laced with fruit, see
small men shepherd massive machines
in procession over a bridge
linking sweat and supermarket
