Produce Wagon

The heat shimmer along our street

one midsummer midafternoon,

and wading up through it a horse’s hooves,

and each shoe raising a tongueless bell

that tolled in the neighborhood,

till the driver drew in the reins

and the horse hung its head and stood.

And something in a basket thin

as shavings (blackberries? or a ghost

of the memory of having tasted them?)

passing into my hands as mother paid,

and the man got up again,

slapping the loop from the reins,

and was off on his trundling wagon.

Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©2010 by Roy Scheele from his most recent book of poetry, “A Far Allegiance,” The Backwaters Press, 2010. Reprinted by permission of Roy Scheele and the publisher.