Roadside Vegetable Stand, Outskirts of Kitchener
It sits: it is part of the weather.
It looks forgotten, and reforgotten.
I have never seen it bear fruit;
I have never seen a child man the stand,
selling cabbages or pumpkins.
I have seen it alone,
contemplative,
under a sun that bleaches it blander,
that usurps the green, tattered canopy,
out in the rain that beats it into loneliness.
A farmer might have left it for a moment,
planning to return, and he fell in love with foreclosure,
and the field offers us this stand:
a serious house on serious earth it is,
and it might have been an emporium
of the farmer’s first kiss,
or his first inclination to damn it all.
It has stood for years, and has stood for
one good reason: our drive-by appetites withstand care,
and the roadside is one idea of order,
is fifteen years ago when the produce was heavy
and the farmer did not abandon his worry
in the lee side of Hwy. 9, instead
he sold it to us.
0 Arc 61, Winter 2009
an Editor’s Choice in the 2008 Poem of the Year Contest
see back of issue for authorship of this poem in The Anonymous Issue
see issue for Poem of the Year winners and Readers’ Choice
Arc 61, The Anonymous Issue, a.k.a Headless : Table of Contents | Contributors
Arc 61, Winter 2008
