Elizabeth Jacobson

Almonds

Of course you would think tree

a farm, water

the California sun.

Each nut a seed in the center of a sage green –

nappy like the outside of a peach –

testicle-shaped –

protector. Spongy, yet

fibrous underneath the fuzz.

We found some at a gourmet food shop,

whole like this

opened them with a scissors,

the meat surprisingly white,

tasteless

a short drink of water.

Of course you would think protein.

Hopefully organic, vitamin E, phenols.

You would think, heart friendly and antioxidant

you would feel content.

The almond, the center of a fruit,

the shape of the eyes of our ancestors

a whole food

not a global concern.

Of course you wouldn’t think

bee death

or drought, or gill rot,

the way everything this good becomes Big Money.

Of course you wouldn’t ask

this almond, or the lives of many salmon?

This almond, or my daily dose of water?

Elizabeth Jacobson is the author of the poetry collection, Her Knees Pulled In, Tres Chicas Books, 2012. She is the founding director of the WingSpan Poetry Project, which brings weekly poetry classes to the residents at the Esperanza Shelter for Battered Families in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and which creates ongoing poetry workshops for various programs at other local shelters. She has taught writing for over 25 years at colleges and elementary schools, in both New York, and New Mexico, most recently with ArtWorks in Santa Fe. Elizabeth is the winner of the 2013 Mountain West Writer’s Contest from Western Humanities Review, the recipient of the Jim Sagel Prize for poetry from Puerto del Sol, and she has an MFA from Columbia University. For more information please see www.elizabethjacobson.net