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Handiwork
- By Howard Lachtman
- Photographs by Rich Turner
- November 15, 2021
- 7:29 pm
- One Comment
I can’t imagine poetry
in this vast, flat land,
this bowl-shaped valley
whose rivers are harnessed
to feed crops and whose poverty
sprouts like weeds between fields
of stooped laborers,
said the visiting professor of poetry,
frowning at the sprawling San Joaquin
as if it lacked any source, any hope of inspiration.
Leave your imagination at home, I urged.
Take a ride on a crowded van of farm workers
rumbling through the darkness before dawn,
men who have little time for words, overworked
as the soil, their hands calloused and blunt
from picking asparagus and lettuce,
cherries, strawberries, peaches and plums
whose consumers, remote from the handiwork,
assume food comes to life for them on demand
in the magical aisles of supermarkets.
Poems also grow in these fields,
resilient despite heat and dust,
despite the acrid air of wildfires
and increasing cycles of drought
that warn us an age of peril has commenced
and the life we take for granted is passing.
As if you could forget that
when you sit down to write
about this valley, this heartland
whose poems are also part of the earth
and come to your hand with no easy labor.
A retired reporter and editor, Stockton resident Howard Lachtman has written Delta-centered detective stories, Stockton Civic Theatre reviews and a variety of baseball tales for Soundings. In 2006. he was honored by the Stockton Arts Commission for “24 years of superior review and commentary on the performing and literary arts in Stockton.”
- By Howard Lachtman
- Photographs By: Rich Turner
- November 15, 2021
- 7:29 pm
- One Comment
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One Comment
I really like your poem! It invoked a sense of history in San Joaquin! Great use of imagery and juxtaposition of the beauty vs. the hardship of the region. Good job.