of refrigerated shelves. The warm afternoon
blows in through open roller doors from where
the parking lot refracts wet shimmers,

and cars idle like a backdrop to the man
picking avocados from a brown bin,
pressing his fingers into the alligator flesh

with the gentle pragmatism of the Michoacán
woman who picked it. How many cents
on the dollar go to the Caballeros Templarios

and how many to the farmers? Hectares
of pine forests vanish beneath that touch.
The carbon sink, the record droughts,

the distance between two points is not
always straight. Outside, the world goes on
reckoning, the cities drowning by degrees,

the species vanishing against the shore
of million year old plankton with a single flick,
one in twenty billion immolations,

the suffering of great grandchildren.
What will they think of us, picking out
green grapes wet with what we can believe

is dew? How far along are we in the story
of mankind? He chooses one, imagines
running a knife through its pulpy flesh.

Across the store, a cashier sets tomatoes
on the scale which beeps and tallies
the weights of distant elsewheres.