Flintinge
When my dad was a boy,
his parents brought him into the fields.
As the whole town picked sugar beets,
their breath hugged
furrows in pre-dawn darkness.
I think of the tug he was taught,
the sound of roots wrested
from the earth
cold in a child’s palms, smeared with dirt.
I’ve felt the swing he learned
to place one gently in the bed
of the tractor.
I imagine the scent of loam,
the sap of sugar sweet on his skin.
L.B. Jørgensen lives in Denmark but writes creatively in English. She has poems published in various magazines such as Magma, The North and Under the Radar. Her pamphlet A Woman Travelling is published by Paekakariki Press.