Teresa White

THE APRICOT HARVEST

If we were anything, we were stragglers.
You could trace us by the clink
of our galvanized pails or the vulgar
language the boys liked to use when reading
a scene, deciding to play gangsters 'til sundown.
The lights in the sky were too many to number.
All I knew was the sweet rot of apricots
as we lay down in the itchy grass and prayed for solar
flares. It wasn't about the short shorts I was wearing
not even about the way I'd worn my hair to park
with you under these eucalyptus in California.
All that's left is the wax paper from the sandwiches
and the new gold loops itching in my ears.
Mama's in the kitchen tweezing out the gray.
Now is the time to put aside these pails and walk
deep into the property and commit our felonies
and admit for punishment the cadence
busy frogs croak out. It is inconceivable
that we will do this again, one more episode
in an apricot orchard, one more summer.

Teresa White has published two books of poetry, In What Furnace? and Gardenias for a Beast, both from Two Steps Publishing Company. The latter received a positive endorsement from Billy Collins and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Teresa has also been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. She has had over three hundred poems published in print and online including Rattle, Snow Monkey, La Petite Zine, The Rose and Thorn, Eclectica, and The Arabesque Review.