- Picking almonds in the parking
- lot of the laundromat, I become furtive,
- suspicious of pedestrians and automobilists, invisible.
- If the owner of this tree should drive up and protest,
- could I claim a right that supersedes his right?
- Could I claim a need? Or a feeling, by virtue
- of what I couldn’t make him understand,
- that these almonds are mine?
- But no one seems to notice.
- People walk by, drive by, park right next to me,
- and don’t even turn a head.
- A few black almonds still stick to their stems,
- left over from the summer before.
- 3 August 1985