Vashon Afternoon
--For Jayne
A woman’s hips are for bending, for dancing and breeding,
For swinging through farm gates, swung wide open, on loose hinges,
For walking, for following
A woman’s hips, down rows of herbs planted by a woman,
Her hips bending, squatting, as she tells you how the
Man planted his vegetables in these three rows, sold her that
Tea shack on the corner of the lot where he said he’d put down
The foundation in a night, but kept his truck in the drive way for seven months.
Pulling a giant radish from a mound,
Red and pink bleeding down its heart-shaped root,
She’s telling you to pick all you can eat,
To uproot all you have room to plant in your yard.
The two of you identify the crops by taste—
Not sure of the difference between kale and collard greens,
A generation too late for recipes of rutabaga and parsnips.
Sure of the difference between your domestic ambition and follow-through,
You try to limit yourself to a modest amount
You unhinge your jaw, swing it wide open,
Guffaw with goodwill at a cheese casserole
she says you could make with the broccoli.
You know, at home, in a dark drawer, eyes are growing
On five pounds of baby red potatoes you bought the last time you felt like this.
But you’re a city girl, and there are goats
In the next plot, chickens clucking in a coop.
You allow yourself the fantasy of yourself in a modest dress,
A forked tail of apron strings swaying with your hips as you roll
Dough near a kitchen window.
Your hips are for making a lap, for hope, for holding your vegetables in the car
Driving away from her farm.
-Rachael Harper
