Picking Rattlesnake Beans

Dark-roast is my first pleasure of
a July morning — then it’s zoysia
wet-nuzzling my toes as I walk through
the backyard, and open the deer fence
for morning’s garden harvest.

The corners of the sun’s mouth turn
upwards, hands flinging a top sheet of
shortleaf pines off waking limbs — her face
chrome yellow and steaming, like ear corn
finishing in the boil.

Beans snap with lust in heat — high today 96.

Rattlesnake, a misnomer for the farmer’s
faithful friend — a fail-safe bean, filling
jars stacked in any Georgia larder.

Some say they’re named for coiling round
and round the vine, but not my beans —
straight and six inches long.

Parting seafoam leaves to find sheathed fruit,
minute hairs gently trace my outstretched
forearm, the tingle stretching to my spine,

it is an emerald climax.

Gary D. Grossman
Verse-Virtual, April 2024