Between the Rows

       I originally wrote this first poem years ago and have revised it so many times since that it gives me a headache to think about.  It's the time of year here when plants begin to grow inches a day, and so this morning, passing our nearby strawberry field, seeing how big the plants suddenly are, and wondering with watering mouth when the first strawberries would be ready,  I decided to share my thoughts on the matter. 

Between the Rows

1.

A tall pole rose in my grandparents' back yard, its finial a two-story,

multiple-room purple marten house Grandpa built. From the grass’s edge,

Grandpa’s strawberry vines trailed down the bank toward the woods. Mom

preserved their summer sweetness in jam we spread on toast

to warm us on Pennsylvania winter mornings. My own efforts,

while my sons napped, rarely made it to Fresno’s foggy winters.

I lack patience, and when a batch appeared promising,

the paraffin failed to seal.

2.

Clouds of pink and white blossoms billow in the orchards

that line the road we follow east toward the Sierra Nevada

foothills rising in gray-green mounds. Through the open windows

the breeze whispers of almonds, peaches, nectarines,

plums, apricots. My sons, the older turned to his brother

in the back, chat of clubs and hopes, for it’s Hank's-Swank-

Par-Three day of the Fresno Junior Golf Tournament, which means

it is also first-flat-of-strawberries day. After the boys' rounds

we pull off to a crude roadside stand, swirling dust behind us.

Between the rows that stretch to the vanishing point

stoop Hmong families, grandpas and grandmas in conical hats,

women in colorful print and striped wrap skirts and blouses,

children in t-shirts and jeans. We study the mounded flats of fruit,

pay for the twelve green plastic baskets of the chosen one, lift it

from the wooden counter and settle it like royalty in the center

of the back seat. Now, my sons and I gather green leaves

with our fingers, open our mouths to the crimson flesh

and are anointed by the moist sweetness of spring.

3.

Like giant gray-green feather dusters, cypress line our narrow

country lane in the middle of the city, crows calling from the tops

that they see the Sierras. It is July, and we move, in a parade

of friends, wheels, and belongings four houses down the street

to our new home. I plant strawberries, but birds and sow bugs

usually find the small fruit before I. Our sons’ bedrooms cannot fit

two beds, and sometimes, unprepared for separation,

one drags his mattress to the other’s room for a sleepover.

4.

For three decades since Vietnam, tens of thousands of Hmong have arrived here,

in California's Central Valley, whose flat aridity contradicts

the humid heights of their Laotian mountain past. But they’ve been expelled

from one land and another and another, for centuries. In the nurturing

of strawberries, they wed ancient culture to new surroundings, and strawberries

do not despise them for being Hmong. My teen students, some born

in Thai refugee camps, some in America, tell me their grandparents chide them

for not speaking Hmong well. “But Grandma speaks so fast, I can't understand.”

5.

It's long since I've driven to Hank's Swank Par Three, drawn by the Sierras
down the road between the rows of blossoms. In this new town
with my new husband, the jagged Southern Sierras swell
what soul I may have. I begin to allow my feet to rest on the ground

of this dry valley that has claimed me. In  early spring
on the corner down the street, green plants poke through
black plastic and trail down the sides of rows that stretch
to the wood fence. One day the Hmong man opens

the shutters of the wood stand to crimson-mounded flats:
it is time again to be anointed with spring’s sweetness.

                                                           —Marilyn Riddle Harper