“Summer Peaches”
from The Local Voice #34: Download PDF

Loading trucks of summer peaches
helped to keep us in the game.
They worked us like a chain-gang
and paid about the same.
The heat was hard on my skin,
so sunburned I felt sick.
But I was young – I could do the work,
three dollars for every bushel that I picked.
We ate our share, too, of
nice fat ones, that were fine,
break through the fuzzy skin
and taste the sweet down to the rine.
The truck would pull up in the
early morning in front of my house
and beep its horn
and I would hunker down
in the back as we rode past the dark forests
and foggy fields of corn.
All those people are gone, I think to myself ,
the boys I worked with,
the man who owned the farm.
They kept going, kept working,
some succeeded,
some of them came to harm.
Their names are lost down in
the memory murk
of summer days and peaches,
when I was young,
and I could do the work.

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