10-25-2021, 01:41 AM
Under Statement
"Calabrians understand heat"
my father would say –
"the unhinged passion of the sun."
It is the source of a pristine morning
in the peach groves where
asps give birth to their young,
dropping them from the trees.
The contadini pick fruit
at their own Cleopatran risk.
In the coolness of first light
I am impressed by the bus driver
who takes time at the side
of the road to pick cactus pears.
Working around the needles,
like so many discarded syringes
on a coastal beach miles away
from my home town:
an abandoned source of chestnuts,
spring water and venom.
Our town, my father told me
was once alive - before
his migration toward the American
dream propelled him forward,
inevitably leading him
before the car
that made the legal u-turn
which took his life.
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"Calabrians understand heat"
my father would say –
"the unhinged passion of the sun."
It is the source of a pristine morning
in the peach groves where
asps give birth to their young,
dropping them from the trees.
The contadini pick fruit
at their own Cleopatran risk.
In the coolness of first light
I am impressed by the bus driver
who takes time at the side
of the road to pick cactus pears.
Working around the needles,
like so many discarded syringes
on a coastal beach miles away
from my home town:
an abandoned source of chestnuts,
spring water and venom.
Our town, my father told me
was once alive - before
his migration toward the American
dream propelled him forward,
inevitably leading him
before the car
that made the legal u-turn
which took his life.
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