Red ripeness

held up high

to a relentless sun

I am

These fingers

Pick your fruit

Pack your meat

I am just

harvesting treasures

for a table with

no chair for my kind

I am just a machine

Waiting on you

on the corner

of needed and hated

I am just a machine to you

bending between the furrows

I dream of seed-studded rubies

growing on my own earth