Secret Harvest

By Joseph Hesch

They hide their faces

like pickpockets,

pulling ruby and garnet

from the Macs' green folds and

from the secret places of Northern Spies.

Black and brown folks, shivering

in a northland that knows mostly white,

from the bosses' faces,

to its mountaintops, 

to its Aprils.

They work hard, paid maybe enough 

to support their families and a life 

that sends them to places that 

will never be their home.

That’s why they hide their faces,

so they won’t have to go Home.

But Federales with badges and

cameras are always trying to

send them back.

Back to El Salvador,

to Jamaica, 

or to Mexico.

After they climb from the ladders

for the last time this season, and

gently unload their treasures into

great grey boxes that dot the orchard,

all the pickers want is to trade

the red gems for some green to travel

to Louisiana for the rice,

to Florida for the celery, or

to the grocer's for their kids.


Autumn is, give-or-take, a couple of days away. This time always puts me in mind of my days in the North Country of New York. Apple country. It also reminds me of a story from when I was working as a baby reporter. I was sent to do a simple apple harvest piece at an orchard near Plattsburgh. There were quiet people all over the place, most of whom would never make eye contact with me. After talking to the owner of the place, I stepped away a bit and pulled my camera out to take a few "atmosphere" shots to illustrate the story.

"No photos," the Boss said. "Put that camera away."

"But I'm just taking a couple of shots for the story. It's such a bucolic scene and..."

"No photos, I said." The Boss sounded pretty stern, but I tried igmoring him and looked through my viewfinder, composing what I thought would be my only shot.

I felt his hand on my shoulder and when I turned, he put his hands on his hips, pulling the front of his jacket open and revealing a revolver attached to his belt.

"No photos, yes sir," I said. And hauled out of there back to Plattsburgh.

When I got to the office, my boss explained the fellow at the orchard was protecting himself and his workforce, which was comprised of more than a few "illegals."

Like I said, I always remember this story when the first batch of apples enters the house. You don't think he really would have shot me, do you?

"Secret Harvest" is my post for today's dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night, which I had the priviledge to host last week. Check it out and enjoy some of the fruits of a world-wide array of special poets.

Estimated Time of Arrival

By Joseph Hesch


Today I realized that I've burned
so much time here looking
up and down the tracks
in hopes that the train will pull in
with a whoosh and take me
where I always suspected
I was supposed to go.
Maybe too late,
I realized my point of view
here on the platform was
seriously askew.
Searching that direction was always
looking back -- toward the Past --
when what I really needed
was to hook up with
an engine full of forward,
the opposite aspect,
headed toward the Future.
But looking up-track was equally fruitless.
Nothing ever comes from that direction.
So now I look straight ahead,
counting on my newly reopened senses
to signal if my Sunshine Limited
finally is coming this way.
There’s always the chance I may have
already missed it, or I could still miss it.
But, at my age, I’m just going to have to
feel for it and then make the leap -–
blindly jumping aboard Life.
Or maybe under it.

My friend Claudia Schoenfeld has posed a poetry prompt at dVerse Poets Pub for the Saturday Poetics feature. She asked us to pen a poem about trains. Here's my quick draft of a poem about looking up and down the tracks of Life.

The Missing Piece

By Joseph Hesch

Not very long ago I learned how
hearts react to warmth,
heads can be turned by words, and
vision blurred by the strain of the search.
It was when I realized we cover ourselves
in so many protective layers,
spun by those words like wire on a spool,
sometimes welding these bindings around us
into a cocoon with the heat of our beating hearts.
I wondered why we are unwilling
to shed our armor or even look within?
Do we fear the inevitable hurt from the other
or even from ourselves?
We’re two puzzles, each with pieces missing,
our souls seeking that other to complete us.
We all deserve to find that one,
recognize him, hold her.
That’s the part so few achieve. The Holding.
I know that such a communion exists.
It exists in the moment,
and for some it can last forever.
This I learned when I finally opened my eyes,
and you recognized me.


This is my weekly poem posted for dVerse Poets Pub's Open Link Night, which, son of a gun, I happen to be hosting tonight. Why don't stop on by and check out the many poets, themes, styles and talents getting together for this week's all-nighter?

Last Blue Sky of Summer

By Joseph Hesch

The night of my forty-ninth birthday,
I pulled the covers over a part
of my life I knew was ending.
The next morning would be the first
on the path to my autumn,
when everything about life would change.
I awoke to a morning sky
of such infinite azure beauty,
so clean of cloud and worry
that I made a memory of it,
something I could carry
in my gray remaining years.
Mercilessly, my memory sky
was smeared by flame and smoke,
by dust and tears.
And soon I realized the selfish dread
I hid behind sleepy eyes the night
of that September 10, would
haunt me for all my days.
Always it will sting my eyes
when I think of that
last blue sky of summer.

On this tenth anniversary of the horrors of September 11, 2001, my poem addresses a loss so much less important in the grand scheme of things. I lost a bit of joy that comes every year on my birthday. And I lost the glory that was that last brilliant sky of my life's summer. (Photo by New York Daily News.)

Course of Nature, Course of Tears

By Joseph Hesch

I tried not to look at them, the pictures

of History’s erasure by a watery scribe
named Irene. She cleaned our broad board
of homes and lives with a red tide of rain
and bad intent, a substitute teacher
who deleted generations of life and livelihood
with her two-day lesson followed by
no one knows how many years
of weeping review.
Where the Mohawk and Hudson,
more dependable than the class-bell crocus,
signal the coming Spring
with their centuries’-old icy combat
for that one last seat in their riparian game
of musical chairs, I tried not to listen
to the roaring music.
I knew there could be no winner
and I didn’t want to hear the names of friends
who would finally lose their homes to,
of all things, a Summer torrent
of surprise and tears.

It’s those salty drops I’ll remember most,
not the gale-blown rains,
the road-ripping spatter of emboldened creeks,
the drip-drip of time waiting
for it all to end.
For many, it will never end.
For children, the nightmares
will echo like the storm's thunder,
even after their trailer-schools move
to a new place of drowned dreams.
The debt-relieving, yet never-harvested,
bumper crops will scar memories
of farms that may never push corn
toward a sky from which their demise
was written in water, carved deeply
in new courses. These courses not taught,
but watched, waiting for something
that may never come again,
yet was never expected to come
in the first place.

(Photo at top by Wil Waldron, Albany Times Union. Photo above from The Saratogian.)

I honestly didn't want to write a poem about Hurricane Irene. But I learned this morning that a couple of old friends lost their home in that Waterford neighborhood above. "Waterford," what an ironic name, bespeaking a safe crossing of the river depths, for a town that annually (and temporarily) floods so many of its inhabitants from their homes. My friends' home was lifted from its foundation and is no longer habitable. I really don't know what to think of this poem, but I'm glad I got it out of my system. Maybe I can look at it as my way of expressing my condolences to those who lost so much in Irene, when I just had to pick up some branches. 

This poem is being linked to dVerse Poets Pub's Open Link Night. Stop by and check out the wonderful array of poets and their works.

Making Me

By Joseph Hesch

It’s so strong this
whatever it is I feel
but choose not to name.
I’ve learned to accept it’s there,
a part of me like my skin
and the blood going in and out of
my scarred and stiffened heart.
For the first time in my life,
I didn’t try to know the why
or how of something.
I don’t categorize, analyze,
or even adverbize it.
It makes me sad and
it makes me glad and
I don’t mean to rhyme
but this is my poetic confession
so you’ll just have to let me slide.
But most of all, this feeling,
this thing you don’t even know
you pour over me,
most of all it makes me
me.


I have been remiss in my duties in not letting you know that this poem was posted as one of almost 150 poems for dVerse Poets Pub's Open Link Night. In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm proud to be one of the poets who hosts this weekly get-together.  My favorite part of running the poetry bar? Hitting the siren when I get tips!

Weight of Days

By Joseph Hesch

He’s dressed in a black coat and hat,

winter or summer,  this old man

I pass every day on our pre-dawn walks.

He comes from beyond those trees,

then up the hill road. 

From there, I don’t know where he goes. 

I don’t have the time to wait

the significant amount of a half-hour

it takes him to get to top of the hill.

His gait is not quite a shuffle. 

It’s maybe half of a shuffle. 

It’s a shuff. 

His left foot, barely skimming the blacktop,

glides forward about ten inches

and then plunks down. 

The right foot follows, dragging forward

to a position of parallel big toes. 

Then a breath. 

Repeat.  Again. Again. Again.

Glacial, relentless in his path …

somewhere. 

I have seen him stop a few times. 

To rest?  Catch his breath? 

Retrieve a memory?  

He grips that large black duffle bag,

slung diagonally upon his shoulder. 

With his feeble bearing, I can’t tell you

how heavy the bag really is. 

The bag looks full of something.

Maybe that’s where he carries the memories.

Even memories have weight,

some more than others. 

He shoulders this burden every day,

focusing through silver lenses

on some point along that hypotenuse–

his line-of-sight–

from his often drippy nose,

to the front of his left boot.

He turns his head neither left nor right,

nor looks for assistance in his effort.

He’s become something more than

an old man inching upward

like a black sun at dawn,

neither pounding out in front of,

nor gasping to catch up with,

that crowd of want-to-be’s

or expect-to-be’s.

I guess he’s his own Alpha,

on the way to his Omega. 

Still shouldering his weight,

climbing that hill, to get to his somewhere.

Always forward. Always there.

Always my shadow between me and the sun.

Maybe my fore-shadow.
I don't look back to check.