14 September 2009

September Harvest


It was 105 degrees in the shade, and there was very little of that where the Sierra foothills lazied into grassy dells and sleepy hummocks near the flightline at Beale.

A mile from the old POW barracks, we found 6 young trees standing in the wild oats - two perfect rows of three, three perfect rows of two. Small, narrow leaves fluttered between silver and green on willowing branches lifting in the hot breeze. Dad warned us not to eat the fruit.

We piled out of the stationwagon, dragging 2 bed sheets apiece, and we spread them beneath the slender reaches, tucking them up against the trunks. Dwayne and I climbed up, and rocked them in the wind. And for ten minutes they dropped a hail of green pebbles, a soft drum of fingers on the cotton below.

6 comments:

Fred Miller said...

Hope you don't mind me calling your poetry sensuous. It's very sensory, yes. But I like to push the word farther, regardless of the connotation. And it's clearly by a woman, too. It's the external, the visual, the auditory, the tactile. It's all that. Men's poetry is so balls.

Love you, Cat.

Anonymous said...

Can you write so evocatively about mechanised harvest?

Cindy said...

Yum. Your words are yum!

Renee said...

sigh........ I always need more.

Love Renee xoxo

studio lolo said...

Ditto on Fredwrite.
Wow Cat.
Delicious writing!

Borut said...

Rock - perfect!:)