the sugarcane harvester 2001

By Adam Gibson ©

there's sugarcane fields
which i remember
from my travels in
the early years of
the 21st century,
my station wagon
roughly-parked
amid the cane furrows
and me hitching a ride
in the cabin of a harvester,
doing several laps of a brown field
the decimating blades
frightening with speed and
blinding flashes and
the terrible

whoompf-whoompf
whoompf-whoompf

of the cane stalks
being smashed into
20cm
billets and flung
warp-speed into the
container and
the trash shredded
and smashed into the
trash basket's grill.

when i jumped down off the machine
and said thank you to the driver,
i stood at eye level
to those blades

and i knew exactly
what they could do to me.