Farmer's Market

image borrowed from bing

Farmer’s Market

“When tillage begins, the other arts follow. The farmers,

therefore, are the true founders of human civilization.”

--Daniel Webster.

Love the colorful splash

of an open-air market

midst the arsenic-gray concrete

of a fallow-brown urban landscape,

those international flags & flavors,

endless rows & tiers

of fruits, meats, candies, glass art, jewelry,

and apparel;

being privileged to wander along

rough burlywood puncheon planks,

interfacing with ceramic tiles

of cinnabar, cornfower-blue

& terra cotta,

moving past silver racks

of screaming silk scarves;

congo-pink, atomic-tangerine, b’dazzled-blue,

bitter lime, British racing-green,

carrot-orange & heliotrope stripes;

huge jars of jelly beans, pungent platters

of chocolate confections, mossy burlap bags

of exotic coffees & far-eastern teas;

bunny-dust grime on steel-wheeled carts,

carrying stacks of Egyptian-blue plastic carriers--

signs of every size with barn-red, lemon butter, 

& saffron letters advertising fat salmon slices,

falu-fallays of pale white trout,

cerulean-frost sides of sea bass

on steaming beds of sparkling ice,

sharing the chill with squads of

cadmium-orange crab legs

& beach-sand clamshells,

surrounded by zip-locked sweating baggies

of cerise-chopped clam-bites;

where Asian, Indian, & Caribbean skin pigments

glisten on barkers in cyber-grape hats,

apple-green & mustard-yellow shirts,

khaki aprons with raspberry-stained sashes,

announcing their wares in several accents;

always finding buskers sprawled out 

on goldenrod blankets, Bulgarian-rose prayer rugs,

& cobalt-blue pillows, playing their acoustic guitars,

mahogany violins, chrome harmonicas, ivory accordions,

& brass saxophones, their blood-stained

blizzard-blue eyes smiling as the street strains

of music weave claret mists & beaver-beige moments,

as upside-down black-bean hats & lipstick-red

coffee cans gather liberty-green bills & silver faced-coins

with copper hearts, as grizzly & liver-brown dogs

sit patiently at their sides, their gray-green eyes

begging convincingly,--strumming & bowing amazon-green

strings with bone-ivory white fingers poking out

of black leather cut-off gloves, plunking 

with carnelian red & coquelicot electric-orange picks,

blowing hard into spit-soaked reeds, pressing

the brass keys lovingly;

wearing cyan, puce, apricot, & Hollywood pink

dress ties, festooned with ruby, jade, & emerald

stick pins, with their red-white-& blue velvet-lined

instrument cases, peeling sadly with faded

flaxen & falu leather strips, leaning against

golden gate-orange pillars & Islamic-green curtains;

most of the musicians in worn denims, tractor-green ball caps,

& eggplant lens sunglasses, many with

Honolulu-blue or jazzberry ear rings;

where even the walkers-by were decked out

in Mardi Gras finery; magenta, watermelon, 

& mango jeans, with lemon curry stains

on their licorice t-shirts, ginger sticks

in their playful grips, padding along

in Barbie-pink & crayola-red tennis shoes.

As I exit, I clutch to my chest

the strobe-light rainbow wild-flower emotions

conjured by prolonged immersion

in a passionate palette of pigments,

hugging them for hours, until they fade, 

begging sweetly for replenishment.

Glenn Buttkus 

Posted over at dVerse Poets Poetics

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