At dusk the soul rocks in its homesickness . . .
–Derek Walcott, from “In Italy”
The six o’clock rattles the track
behind the junior college farm,
blasts grackles from the oak.
Beneath the squawking parabola
carved into dusk’s yellow band,
a freshman grips his knees, leans
into the flank of his ward,
a Guernsey stooping for grass.
He warms his face against
her steaming hide and imagines
peaches hanging from his father’s
trees, the smudge pots belching
dark into dark, his mother counting
crates in the shed—rocking the arm
of the adding machine—
the harvest tumbling through
the washer’s hiss. He considers
the sweet smell of juice seeping
through a bruise, how distance
is gauged by more than space,
the mandatory cull of wounded fruit.