Driving through Hampton Bays
past pitch pines and scrub oaks
and nearer the bogs pot ponds,
our car picks up speed.
Here, the shoulder heather
surrenders a scarlet haze,
like harvests on Davis bog. We day laborers
with double handed maple wood scoops, whose teeth
tamed columned plants like combed hair, dry picked cranberries.
Teenagers stooping, stained, and bent at the back
tilted our boxes of rolling claret stones
and rose slowly, again, not to bruise the fruit.
We left the slap wood crates of cranberries
standing in step measured wakes
to be picked up, after our passing.