MOTHER PICKING PRODUCE
She scratches the oranges then smells the peel,
presses an avocado just enough to judge its ripeness,
polishes the Macintoshes searching for bruises.
She selects with hands that have thickened, fingers
that have swollen with history around the white gold
of a wedding ring she now wears as a widow.
Unlike the archived photos of young, slender digits
captive around black and white orange blossoms,
her spotted hands now reaching into the colors.
I see all the folklore of her childhood, the fields,
the fruit she once picked from the very tree,
the wiry roots she pulled out of the very ground.
And now, among the collapsed boxes of yucca,
through crumbling pyramids of golden mangos,
she moves with the same instinct and skill.
This is how she survives death and her son,
on these humble duties that will never change,
on those habits of living which keep a life a life.
She holds up red grapes to ask me what I think,
and what I think is this, a new poem about her--
the grapes look like dusty rubies in her hands,
what I say is this: they look sweet, very sweet.
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About this poem. . .
I trace my love and longing for Cuba to my mother who left behind every last one of her relatives, including seven brothers and sisters, to follow my father to America. This poem attempts to capture a very subtle yet powerful moment when I connected with my mother, not as a parent, but as a woman; the first time I came to understand the fullness of her humanity: the breadth of her loss and pain, as well as her incredible strength and perseverance.
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