We ran to the trellises, ready to hand-rake the bushes
For our bounty of ripened fruit, a half hour till
Closing. So many tart, magenta berries in early July.
No breeze. We needed the loamy smell of the farm,
To be small as we faced its panoramas, as we
Walked into the whir of its measured rows. We needed—
My husband, daughter, and I—to find sustenance
At its source. We brought a bag we had hoped to fill,
Between eating samples, with pulpy fruit, but we were
Happy, too, to hang out in this green zone empty-handed,
To stand with the masses of plants, passing time.

In the office’s waiting room, the corn plant’s glossy
Leaves approached the ceiling. The neurologist
Asked my mother, her mind an overcast sky, to draw
A clock. She scrawled an angled, sagging clock—
Salvador Dalí style—drifting off an invisible edge.

“Let’s go to the farm,” I had offered. The day before,
Recalling a red-bereted general, age seven, at his door—
A neighbor boy standing at attention with a toy musket,
Wearing his dad’s robe, a child nicknamed “Hats”—
My husband had eulogized his lifelong friend, only
Fifty. After parking at the farm, as the sun beat down,
My husband set his baseball cap on my head, adjusting
The brim. For himself he found, in a hidden sack
In the trunk, a black tricorn pirate’s hat, which
He modeled with gusto, charging past orange zinnias,
Zipping ahead to the blackberries. Our daughter tagged
After him. That day in the sun, my needs were my husband,
Daughter, plants that provide fruit. Later, at the farm’s
Store, we picked peaches, sweet onions, blueberries, corn.