Carolina Gold

It is Friday, late May. That means it is time to go to our farm near the South Carolina coast and check on the rice crop. The seedlings are about five inches tall now, and if all goes well we should have a wonderful crop this year. This is not normal rice, though. We are one of three small farms that are producing this heirloom variety of aromatic rice. So, what I am getting at is this: I am off to plod around in the mud and beat back mosquitoes.

I like this a lot:

by Kathleen Jamie, from Waterlight: Selected Poems.

Suitcases

Piled high in a corner of second-hand store
in Toronto: of course,
it's an immigrant country. Sometimes

all you can take is what you can carry
when you run: a photo, some clothes,
and the useless dead-weight

of your mother tongue.
One was repaired
with electrician's tape—a trade

was all a man needed. A girl,
well, a girl could get married. Indeed
each case opened like an invitation:

the shell-pink lining, the knicker—
like pockets you hook back
with a finger to look

for the little linked keys.
I remember how each held a wraith
of stale air, and how the assistant seemed

taken aback by my accent;
by then, though, I was headed for home,
bored, and already pregnant.