Tag Archives: harvest

Bare feet in the October afternoon
we peel apart the flowering silks
of season-ending sweet corn;

the scent of sugared earth floats
as we tear the still-green leaves
revealing rows of cobbed kernels.

Snapping free the stalk and
tossing aside the husk,
we lay the ear by for blanching.

The girls yank and pull and tug
at the shucking, laugh, and grasp
a silk or two with the tips of their fingers

and run through the grass.  I boil, blanch, and shock
the loaded cobs, fillet sheets of gold nuggets into the pan,
spoon the bags full of summer’s gifts for winter’s darkness.

I fill these poems with yanking, pulling, tugging,
shucking, laughing, grasping, running,
the sweetness of childhood’s gifts for the winter’s darkness.