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Summer Fruits

 

 

Many summers ago

when Grandpa would come home

from the fields

his white plastic buckets would bring

either bad or good news for the

tastes of us grandchildren,

asparagus or the sweet taste of

a Thompson seedless.

 

When Grandpa unloaded his brother

Domingo's truck, we all watched

with anticipation. Would the tools he

removed be the hand-held clippers

or the long-shafted asparagus cutters.

Would we get the sweet summer afternoon

treat of grapes popping in our mouths.

Or would mom get yet another

brown paper bag of "it's good for you"

despite the taste.

 

But it was the asparagus that bought

the tiny green house in a westside Fresno neighborhood

it was the grapes, and later raisins that

raised eight children

while strawberries, peaches and onions

clothed, fed and sent them to school.

 

While we, wild grandchildren with dirty

bare feet, ate grapes and watched

afternoon cartoons ­ before the front yards

were chain linked in ­ we had no idea

we were the first generation of Ricardos

who would not pick the very fruit we ate.

 

Grandpa's pruning clippers, asparagus

cutters and knives are dispersed among the

garages and tool sheds of the rest of the family,

but the dirt from the fields has not washed away

in the stories about working with Pop.

And now I miss the taste of

fresh asparagus.

 

From the chapbook Campesino Fingerprints © 2000 Rod Ricardo-Livingstone.