Sylvia Plath

Memoirs Of A Spinach-Picker

They called the place Lookout Farm. Back then, the sun Didn't go down in such a hurry. How it Lit things, that lamp of the Possible! Wet yet Lay over the leaves like a clear cellophane, A pane of dragonfly wing, when they left me With a hundred bushel baskets on the edge Of the spinach patch. Bunch after bunch of green Upstanding spinach-tips wedged in a circle— Layer on layer, and you had a basket Irreproachable as any lettuce head, Pure leafage. A hundred baskets by day's end. Sun and sky mirrored the green of the spinach. In the tin pail shaded by yellow paper Well-water kept cool at the start of the rows. The water had an iron taste, and the air, Even, a tang of metal. Day in, day out, I bent over the plants in my leather-kneed Dungarees, proud as a lady in a sea Of prize roses, culling the fullest florets; My world pyramided with laden baskets. I'd only to set one foot in wilderness— A whole sea of spinach-heads leaned to my hand.