Breaking Ground
One Poem by Ben Pitts
Breaking Ground
They killed off rows of orange groves with green poison
gluged into earth, and the roots soaked full as a sponge —
remember not to eat the fruit in afternoon sun. In summer,
it took the teeth of two dozers to splay a path for plumbing.
Piled branches clench dried oranges shrunk to golf balls
plink and roll in piles. My friend was raped down there
next to piles of PVC (enough to vein a city) she said,
I was trying to plant myself underground like a seed.
They built a lake near that spot. My daughter and I go there
when the sky is sunset-orange and feed the ducks old bread.
Sometimes the fish will swim just close enough to touch.
Ben Pitts is a High School English teacher by day and a renegade poet by night. Phoenix, Arizona is where he calls home and where he’s lived his entire life with his beautiful wife, Brianne, and fiery 3 year old daughter Grace.
Photo Credits: Carleton Watkins, photographer (American, 1829–1916), [The Devil’s Slide, Utah], American, 1873–1874, Albumen silver print. Courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
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