Tobacco Trilogy
I. Planting
Winter held onto its last; the cutting wind
defied the greening hills, the budding orchard.
And plastic sheets stretched taut over tobacco beds,
the appearance of still, frozen lakes.
It happened while we looked away, perhaps
departing into the woods to play.
As a child I sometimes hoped that maybe
this day would never come, when the shoots,
fragile at first, began to push against the surface,
sheets stretched to the point of bursting.
Playtime ended. The workers came, neighbors,
cousins, strangers, connected by four bucks an hour.
We pulled spindly white plants by the handful,
and shook dirt from the roots.
The sky would change quickly, light to dark to light;
angry eyes glared upward; our bodies raced the rain.
II. Growing
So much of summer’s work happened without us,
leaves fanning out beneath a blistering sky.
From the fence it seemed the curved rows
rolled in green waves, and a boy could swim it,
riding the contours of hillsides. By mid-summer
the pink blossoms sprouted. For just a second
it’s the Garden of Eden, just before the first
worker crosses into the field and you follow.
There’s four of you, tar-soaked hands ripping
each bloom which falls into the dark below.
Work begins with a joke. An older man looks at you,
says ‘last one down does this the rest of his life.’
Laughter gives to silence. Only that snap of blooms
the rest of the day — and men worrying about fate.
III. Harvest
Dark settled earlier; Halloween passed;
the air grew thin, brittle as razor sharp ice.
We closed the barn doors but the cold
found us, entering through the cracks.
And voices. The voices of a family stripping
cured tobacco from the stalk, separating
each by weight and grade. A boy coughed
the dust-caked air into his sleeve.
The elders shared stories above the ruckus.
Men speaking of day jobs, kids of school,
someone would look at the tar sticking
to their hands, before one of the adults
would notice and say ‘keep up.’ And
the sound of crackling dry leaves resumed.
