The Packing House

That old Clovis road
smelled of peaches rotting.
Sunrise, driving to work
at the packing house, I watched
mirages loom
in the hot asphalt.

By early afternoon
the thin heat lowered
on the packers
as we stood along the conveyor belt
below a sheet metal roof.

At break Hilda and me
drove to the nearest
irrigation ditch and threw murky water
over our hot shoulders,
then back to stand,
soaking wet in our positions.

The whole day the boss' teenage son
rode around us
in his black Firebird
with the red competition stripes.
Sometimes he'd strut by
and order us not to talk.

Late in the day, dry dust
rose from the dirt road
where old cars and pickup trucks
came back from the orchards,

full of men, sweaty from picking,
returning to their shacks
behind the owner's house.

Just past sundown packers went home
raising a cloud above every set of headlights.
We drove past the white pillard mansion,
past the rich green pasture,
past sleep quarter horses grazing,
into a sunset of overripe peaches.
We looked, exhausted, into the evening,
too tired to notice our long dark stream
of old beat-up cars.

©Jannie M. Dresser

This poem is from the poet's recently published collection, Ancestor Worship. For information about obtaining a copy contact Jannie Dresser@think-ink.net