Poetry: Highway Five Love Poem

High­way Five Love Poem
for Anna
–Ruth L. Schwartz
From Dear Good Naked Morning

This is a love poem for all the tomatoes
spread out in the fields along High­way Five,
their gleam­ing green and rud­dy faces like a thousand
moons pros­trate in praise of sun.
And for every curd of cloud,
clot­ted cream of cloud spooned briskly
by an unseen hand into the great blue bowl,
then out again, into a greedy mouth.
Cot­ton baled up beside the road,
altars to the patron saint of dry­er lint.
Moist fudge of fresh­ly-plant­ed dirt.
Shag­gy neglect­ed sav­age grasses
bent into the wind’s designs.
Sheep scat­tered over the land­scape like fuzzy confetti,
or herd­ed into stub­bled fun­nels, mov­ing like rough water
toward its secret source.
Egrets pray­ing in the fields like
white-cloaked priests.
A dozen wise and pon­der­ous cows
sud­den­ly spurred to run, to gal­lop, even,
down a flank of hill.
Hors­es for sale, goats for sale, nopales for sale, orange groves for sale,
top­less trail­ers car­ry­ing horses,
manes as loose and love­ly as tomor­row in our mouths,
and now a giant pig, jostling majes­tic in the open
bed of a red pickup.