Bright Tide

—for N.C. 1 Among all the harvests these are ones we make myth of— heat loosening squash spicing the dew as we rush to fill the restaurant order— haul our ripe crates. Organic cash crop: to market, to market. 2 New worlds on the sky, sungold solar systems. Gold balls on the chain. We map our hands in the scent of tomato. 3 Lost ones sag. Lost ones break. Birds peck. The ground oozes. The unpicked fruit wavers. We catch what we can. 4 Basic: between stalks for hours in binary motion—ripe/ not ripe, not mental really not boring either decisions of thumb & forefinger forging attunement between body & vine; as if picking were all we were made for— plop plop in crates in our upturned shirts. 5 I was in the field the day you called to say you’d lose the baby. How your sac was broken, and there was no saving it, just the waiting. I stood there, the whole day wrapped around me. I stood there, crying, smelling vine. 6 Another day of work. Another. 7 All month I thought of you, of us, the women, of all the trying to & breaking open. Of the rainsplit? ones, the ones that burst. And of the smells of vine & harvest. I wanted to give you tomatoes. 8 Here, a life is many ripened. Sprung, the seeded cells, a fragile mix of luck and tending. Warm furze blur of dust & buzzing. Tangle risen from the mud & marching. Here we are not self but species breaking as we bend & also fruiting pressing onward in the long bright tide: yes it breaks & yes it also swells—