Poem: "Farm and Field"
This poem came out of the September 6, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from stryck, thesilentpoet, and haikujaguar. It was sponsored by marina_bonomi.
You can learn more about the heritage breeds of Italian livestock online. Other poems about Fiorenza, the Italian Herbalist are listed on the serial poetry page of my website.
Farm and Field
Fiorenza is the one whom the farmers call
to care for the livestock when something goes wrong.
She makes the pungent powder
to kill pests on the red-and-black Pepoi hens
who cluck their way through the gardens
and lay a trail of pale rosy eggs.
She makes the soothing salve
for the chapped teats of the Reggiana cows
with their warm brown eyes and coats the color of red wheat,
who give the good milk for reggiano cheese.
She makes the sweet oil
for painting the dry hooves of the black Norico horses
who work in draft teams to plow and harvest the fields,
patient as the slowly turning wheel of the seasons.
Fiorenza winds her way through farm and field,
picking as she goes,
leaf and flower and root and bark
all in one basket on her right arm,
and on the left, another basket
that the farmers fill
with eggs and cheese and bread.
It is that food she thinks of
when she holds the fuzzy chicks in the palm of her hand
or leans against the fragrant flank of a cow
or strokes the velvet noses of the foals.
These beasts stand behind everything her people eat,
their red and black colors setting the palette of the village
and appearing in pastoral paintings
up in the city of Fermo.
When she walks through the village
covered in mud or manure,
a heavy basket in each hand,
Don Candido shakes his head at her
but says nothing,
and she knows why.
Fiorenza has seen him decorate the church
at the end of the year,
and she remembers his large gentle hands
laying out the creche
with the Christ child surrounded by
red-and-black hens and wheat-red cows
and draft horses as black as the good Italian earth.