Skylark
for Mr. Oyama
Simon Seisho Tajiri
The fields choke on the black plastic our fathers taught us to lay.
The work keeps going—
Fields of endless pine.
I know poison descends with dew.
I know the treeless soil is spent.
I know the world will tire of pineapple.
But when the whistle wakes, I rise and join the circling trucks.
I feed the machine’s unresting maw with fruit and crown.
Bending, twisting, snapping.
Bend twist snap
Until the whistle shrieks.
The food I plant is not for me.
With each fruit I pick, a can is crushed.
A puddle of petrol smokes.
I plant, I poison, I harvest.
Sometimes the wind catches me and I look up from the line.
When I was a boy the birds cast shadows.
When I was a boy, only feathered wings passed by.
~~~~~
Simon Seisho Tajiri is from Lānaʻi, an island distinguished in the calm.