Hairy Carrots

The gleaners undirt these profane candy morphs as they sift through the fields in springs and falls. Apiaceous, mud beige burrowed beasties, them bow legged, cowboy pulps; others with flipped birds sprung up from their hairy carrot fists, bronxing to the sun. You would think they would be tough, those mutter udders, those gangsta roots, but they slice nicely into sticks, lunch box size, far sweeter than the common orange of their ilk, far sweeter than their own shrubby beards would veil. Perhaps it’s the extra time under muck that honeys them up, dirt balls matriculating, steeped in their element. On weekends at the soup kitchen, late May through long past Labor Day, we pack the sweet gleaned under-chips into sack lunches with smoked ham hero’s and Frito's downtown behind the Kroger where a sunny civil riot takes place on Saturdays, and everyone shows up out of their bag to pick up the sticks, hungry stomachs, all blood color-red in the gut all ready to sit their hells down…and eat.