Mustard Fields

Jessica McClintock's grandmother taught sewing,

I own a romantic Victorian dress,

grow poor, I worked for what I wore,

Google search: Gunny Sax is still with us.

Search Etsy, used clothing, no flowery perfume,

they carries ghosts of divorces,

arm pit sweat of dances,

and lonely afternoons in mustard fields.

Laura Ashley died young, 

like my Dad at sixty in a sad spill on stairs, 

the doctors missed pieces of wallpaper with

sparrows perching on heirloom roses.

Bugs with four legs are okay to eat,

bodies recall melodies of spring, 

locusts, beetles, and grasshoppers sing

dipped in sunshine and chalcanthites.  

Caroline Gerardo Mustard Poem 

copyright © May 14, 2018