reaping

troubled that my first experience
with sweet cherries should be
bleached maraschinos bathed

in red 40 & dropped into a coke
float or perched atop a banana
split, my father drove the kids

to the nearest orchard in Riverside
Co. where we harvested to
our hearts’ content,

limbs heavy with orbs
I reached w/ a ladder,
in the June heat our bodies

grew brown as Mexican
migrant workers, my mother shaded
her face & skin fair

in contrast to my own,
she a Hsiue, my father a Pai
together we gorged on ruby

red crop, not knowing
the origins of Bing - the Chinese
foreman’s heirloom fruit

a cultivar bred a century before
by a tenant farmer forborn
the passage home