Migrant Mother

Hands and clothes still caked with
the dirt of our last job, we drove
to Pajaro Valley, to work the lettuce fields.
On Highway 101, our radiator popped
and spewed like a geyser, hot water
mixed with even hotter steam.
We pulled into a pea-picker camp
right outside Nipomo to wait on
repairs for our damaged Hudson.

Jim and my older boys dragged
the radiator to town like oxen, puling
ropes over shoulders to move the cart.
I stayed with the other children
in our tiny tent. I would have asked
for work but rain destroyed the crops.
Thousands of people sat there around us,
with no job, no money, no food.
At least we had a car to get out.

A woman came by once.
She was looking for work like us
but in a different kind of way.
She lugged her camera and
other photojournalist tools
over to our little temporary home.
She talked very little, and was
obviously tired. What did this woman
know of exhaustion?
She took our picture, and said we
would be helping save others. She
said we could have some copies.

We never got them, but a magazine did.
We never got food, we left before it arrived in the camp.
We never got money, she hadn’t taken my name.