Thousands of blueberry bushes
Grew in the clearing
Marked only by a small, low, packing house
And a school bus, marked-
"Farm Labor Transport."
At the end of the working day pickers swarmed around a pump
Forming a jumbled line:
Old women, middle-aged men, even a young girl.
Charlie's whole family worked
As farm labor:
His sister, packing the boxes, his daughter-in-law
Covering them with cellophane and his son;
The supervisor.
Charlie often got angry
His weathered face worn and red
Worked up as he spoke of the injustice
The supermarket chains that stole from the pickers
Took straight from their hands
Their hard-earned labor
But at the end of this particular day
As the pickers exchanged all their tickets for cash
Charlie was approached by an elderly man
Given a fistful of tickets
Which the man assumed had fallen from his son's pocket.
Charlie looked at me with shock in his hard brown eyes:
The tickets were worth seventy-five dollars.
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