Poetry Skills Exercise:
Pine Barrens:
Version 1
The Pine Barrens once had their own particular witch.
Pineys put salt
over their doors
to discourage visits from the Witch of the Pines,
Peggy Clevenger.
It was known that
she could turn herself into a rabbit,
for a dog was once seen chasing a rabbit
and the rabbit
jumped through the window of a house,
and there-
in the same
instant,
in the window
- stood Peggy Clevenger.
On another
occasion, a man saw a lizard
and tried to kill
it by crushing it with a large rock.
When the rock hit
the lizard,
the lizard disappeared
and Peggy Clevenger materialized on the spot
and smacked the man in the face.
Clevenger is a Hessian name.
Peggy lived in
Pasadena,
another of the now
vanished towns, about five miles east of Mt. Misery.
It was said
that she had a stocking full of gold.
Her remains were
found one morning
in the smoking
ruins of her cabin,
but there was no trace of the gold.
Version 2:
It was said that she had a stocking full of gold,
the Witch of the Pines, Peggy Clevenger.
And on occasion
could turn into a rabbit.
To discourage visits
she disappeared to a vanished town.
Windows and doors materialized one morning
the smoking ruins
of her cabin,
in Pasadena, five miles east of Mt. Misery
but there was no
trace of the gold.
The Blueberry Pickers
Version 1:
We had come to a clearing
where thousands of blueberry bushes grew.
In the center of it was the packing house-
a small, low building
with open and screenless windows on all sides.
In front of it was
a school bus marked “Farm Labor Transport.”
The driver stood beside his bus.
He was a tall and
amiable-looking man,
with bare feet he
wore green trousers and a T-shirt.
The end of the working day had come.
Pickers were swarming around a pump-
old women,
middle-aged men, a young girl.
A line was waiting
to use an outhouse near the pump.
Inside the packing
house,
berries half an
inch thick were rolling up a portable conveyor belt
and, eventually, into pint boxes.
Charlie’s sister was packing the boxes.
Charlie’s daughter –in-law was putting cellophane over
them.
Charlie’s son Jim was supervising the operation.
Charlie picked up a pint box
in which the
berries were mounded high,
and he told me with disgust that
some supermarket chains knock off these mounds of extra
berries
and put them in
new boxes, getting three
or four extra
pints per twelve-box tray.
At one window,
pickers were turning in tickets of various colors, and
they were given cash in return.
One picker,
who appeared to be at least in his sixties,
tapped Charlie on the arm and showed him a thick packet
of tickets
held together with
a rubber band.
“I found these,” the man said. “They must have fallen out of your son’s
pocket.”
He gave the packet to Charlie, who thanked him
and counted the tickets.
Charlie said,
“These tickets
are worth seventy-five dollars.”
Version 2:
The end of the
working day had come.
Berries, half an
inch thick
were rolling up a portable conveyor belt
and eventually,
into pint boxes.
Mounded high
cellophane over them.
Pickers swarmed
in the clearing
where thousands of blueberry bushes grow.
The screenless windows
of the packing house
stood amiable and bare.
Inside Charlie’s sister was packing the boxes.
Pickers turned in
their tickets for cash,
and a man gave Charlie a packet
held together with a rubber band.
“I found these,” the man said.
The tickets were worth seventy-five dollars.
In the front
A school bus was marked
“Farm Labor Transport”.
