We all sorrow as we stand
in the lonely potato fields, looking at the 33 pipas
that still need to be moved across the field.
We have been here all summer,

moving las pipas through grain and potato fields;
we are ready to go home,
to creep clandestinely through the barbed wire
again, just to be reunited with our familias.

All summer, we have sent much of the green
we have earned, home,
through the telegraph lines, so our familias
could survive. We live on beans and rice,

tortillas and beer, sometimes
with some ice cream sprinkled in.
On the 4th of July, we celebrate with the gringos,
watch the fireworks shoot noisily in the air,

eat sloppy Joes, but we dream
of home and nuestros queridos.
We hope they are fine without us.
Then summer turns to fall, and the grain trucks

need to be driven; the pipas need to be retrieved
and hauled to their resting spots.
Soon, las papas are ready to harvest.
Some of us work in the dark cellars, ridding

las papas of the clods and vines that somehow
make it to the trucks. Others work the combines,
or drive the trucks. Only twice did we have scamper
across the papas to the back the cellar.

La Migra only caught a few of us. The rest burrowed
deep into the cellars, other hiding places,
praying to Dios to bless us with just a few more days.
The coast clear, we stumble back into the light of the cellar,

wishing las papas were all stacked in piles behind us.
Then we could go home and cringe at the sight
of poverty, our poverty, and ache for the time
we could return to the fields, to moving pipas,

to sinking knee-deep in wet lines, knowing freedom
for the first time yet knowing we didn’t belong,
yet feeling jingling coins in our pockets that soon
would be in the hands of nuestros queridos

and feeling our hearts unsheathed and longing….