Loving the Social Anthropologist
Almería
His country was hot,
his economy informal.
His method was covert –
participant observation.
Before dawn in the square,
he would watch the men gather
collecting in shadows
and concentric circles –
the lightest in the middle,
the darkest around the edges.
Some were chosen, loaded
into vans and driven off.
To rip off plastic sheeting.
To lay on plastic sheeting.
For tomatoes and aubergines,
cucumbers, peppers.
He said the greenhouses
could be seen from space.
He said that by sunrise
the men were invisible.
Paul Stephenson has three poetry pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), which won the Poetry Business pamphlet competition; The Days that Followed Paris (HappenStance, 2016), written after the November 2015 terrorist attacks; and Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). He helps curate Poetry in Aldeburgh. His debut collection Hard Drive was published by Carcanet in June 2023. Website: paulstep.com / Instagram: paulstep456 / Twitter: @stephenson_pj