STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER

F.D. JACKSON

Strawberry plants wake from water-logged sleep, crippled and twisted, bent like old men carrying peat. Hard rain pounds them to the ground, stuck in their own wet dirt grooves like mosquitoes in amber. Tender green and red fruit heads raise at the sound of the loping cam shaft of a 1965 Chevrolet truck, rolling down the field’s margin. It’s early morning, and the hooded- eyed dashboard is lit up in eerie neon green, like the Star Trek captain’s deck. Suppliant reddish-green berries bow in devotion; they lean toward him as he exits the truck, drawn to the stale scent of Camel cigarettes, mixed with coffee and a hint of Aqua Velva. Sensing holy blood, they breathe him in, white, yellow-centered flowers expanding and deflating like the billows of an old ventilator. Believing the Sun god has abandoned them to certain root rot death, they pray to him for intercession--Farmer--Akhenaten. Under bloated blue-gray sky, he works his way down mounded rows of saturated sandy loam on bended knee, big, tanned, and veiny hands straightening crowns atop rooted mudball heads, rain soaking his back. A cough racking his bones, constricted alveoli drowning in green-gray ooze, he does not stop until dozens of rows of berries stand at attention, lush green stems canopying with red fruit. Tiny daughter vines serpentine away, creating new supple shoots that lay root, crisscrossing the field like crimson dotted bindweed. His hands out with palms up momentarily, he rubs a handful of strawberries on his pants leg, then shoves one in his mouth. He looks to the sky in supplication, as it stirs another dark purple storm. Orange disc Sun god peaks above black spired pines. Warm golden limbs spread across the field, folding sheets of rain and pushing shadowy water death off the edges of earth. Sun god rewards plants and animals alike, each nourishing the other, both waiting obediently for harvest.

They rise with the sun.

F.D. Jackson lives in the southeastern U.S., along with her husband and sundry furry family members. When not writing or reading, she can be found wandering the Gulf Coast with a cold drink in her hand.

Her work has appeared in Book of Matches, Poetry Breakfast and is forthcoming in Plum Tree Tavern.