Harvesting Pumpkins

Harvesting Pumpkins

From villages in Iowa,
Indiana, Minnesota and Nebraska
and from towns in the Dakotas,
Wisconsin and Michigan,
there stream to Chicago in spring
parades of lithe girls
looking for boys 
who will look at them

but who find instead
men who will wine them
through summer,
who will wait until fall
to thresh in the fields
one summer can ripen,

men who will watch
till a pumpkin falls from the vine.
This is the courtship
village girls dream of,
laugh about, hope for.
Come fall, these are the men

who fill silos of girls
from Elkhart and Davenport,
Ely and other small places,
lithe girls who in spring
come to Chicago 
looking for boys
who will look at them
but who find instead
the reapers, the men.

Donal Mahoney
Copyright © | Year Posted 2010

Poem

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Johnson Avatar
April 11, 2010 at 1:07 PM
And by the way. My mama called me pumpkin. Joyce
Johnson Avatar
April 11, 2010 at 1:07 PM
I was one of those girls from N. Dak. but I didn't go away to find him. He was my home grown boy. I got a kick out of this however. Love, Joyce
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