migrant farmworkers

MIGRUNT

Twenty years he spent,

Bent, with a short woe,

Caressing lettuce heads.

Then he lay, doubled,

Twisted, in his bed.

Thirty-six is no age

To be old, or dead.

1971

"Migrunt" was first published in Monsters in Half-way House, 1981.  Beginning in 2008, I have used it as part of an exercise in writing explications in my composition and literature classes at Miami Dade College.

Farmworkers work very hard to provide other Americans with relatively cheap, nutritional food.  However, the work can be debilitating because of the constant bending, working in the hot sun, and exposure to pesticides and fertilizers.

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