Mother I am frowning while I work.
I am browning like a peasant,
I have been months in these fields of Grosseto,
that are too removed and too wild for you.
Weeds should not grow too flamboyant.
It is July, the work will be hacking.
Sorry, nothing can be done about the hot.
They hand me implements, gloves for blisters,
a hat for the sun. I carry these under my arm,
your ransoms in my head, a dull hoe for hacking.
The land is not like you. It needs love and taming like me.
It is itching underneath sheets of heat.
It is dry as static, prickly as our conversations,
carcasses fouling in thickets of scratches.
Brittle things snap with little provocation.
There are collapsing nests, bloodlines
dismembered. In these fields you are a giant.
Your yawns and disappointments
are vortices and huge shadows.
You think I make big dramas, loud disagreements
But I flee to dark burrows when disturbed.
I relate to the spiders, no more than abdomen core
and propping stick. I am insectile and careful.
I make movements in miniscule.
My breath is buzzing, my steps are ticks.
Here is something you don’t know.
Here we talk in pulses, our chatter is intimate
immediate as trembling teeth.
We work in staccato, we mate in situ
we are ringing with love.
Weeds should not grow too flamboyant
But I am deep in this place.
Propped like a cricket
in a bed a man is hacking at me.
I hear crescendo of whistling stalks
limbs rubbing like strings.
I am surrounded and cannot hear your reasonings.