Aisha’s Egypt: French Fry Farmers

Can you carry your plate of french fries
On your head to your dinner table?
A plate full of tasty french fries
Is a “fast” food in some places,
But it’s not so speedy, here in Egypt,
Where guiding a horse and tilling the field
Is the way potatoes make it to the plate.
 

Can you see yourself clearing the field,
Collecting them one by one,
From the soil into your bucket?
Just imagine your daily life
Working as a french fry farmer –
No one pulls the bag from the freezer
Without someone harvesting potatoes.
 

;^)

Photo Poem: Brick And Mortar Outhouse

Image Source: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/water-well-odon-czintos.html

;^)

Click Here for the previous submission

Submitted to the Speakeasy Grid, week #151 at yeahwrite.me – This week the prompt is the sentence, “Life had once been defined by linears and absolutes,” to be used as the first line in the post, and some reference to be made to the photo “Water Well,” by Odon Czintos. Like to learn more? Click this logo to join us:

Poem: Oh Cairo, Chapter 2

Grapevine and Date Palm at Dawn

OH CAIRO
Chapter 2
 
Waking up, I rise from my bed
And tiptoe to my window
I fill my eyes with the sight of green
In all degrees of saturation
From the palest, lightest, luminescent leaf
To fronds of silhouetted palm
Elegantly backlit by the dawn
 
Oh, Allah, Alhamdulillah
I have awakened into a dream
Unable to move, unable to breathe
Without first whispering to You my thanks
Without seeing Your Glory and singing Your Praise
Without recognizing Your Mercy and Grace
For delivering me into Egypt
 
The leaves of potatoes sparkle with dew
Planted in the orchard of peaches
Thickly like children playing at the feet
Of their mothers in straight lines for praying
Row after row of peach trees in flower
Their pink petals move like lips whispering in prayer
Their branches raised in salute and takbir
 
The fields of the farmers brightly cover the land
Like squares of a green-checkered blanket
Of wheat, romaine lettuce, and spicy gargir,
Cauliflower and cabbages and clover
Evergreen citrus trees generously laden
With oranges, nectarines and lemons,
And date palms swaying in stately columns