Salted Fields

Potshards from amphora

Floating through soil

Since soldiers salted the fields

On their way back to Carthage

Sheep and goats resweetened the soil

Salt as rare as terra cotta in these fields now

More likely to find Roman coins

Spanish swords and French petards

Plowing too deep unearths bombs from the last great war

As tomatoes and eggplant

Explode all around

The ancient tractor rusts beneath the olive branches

Where the Sicilian ass took his shade

With the contadino’s nonno and father

A family farm for more than a century

Today we meet, share some wine

Smell the sweet basil

Taste sweet tomatoes warm from the sun

A final harvest before the houses are built

We salt the earth again

With tears of love.