Greengrocer

–at the Campo dei Fiori

Six days a week she’s at her stall
of prodigal greens, rust-flecked leaves
falling around her, the little mouse tails
of string beans clipped, the stem ends
trimmed like nails. From her hands
everything green and less than good
spills at her feet. Even what she’ll keep
falls first into cool water from a fountain left
by a Caesar before she raises it dripping
like the saved, the gathered rocket
and chard, a hill of long-stemmed
artichokes carved in perfect terraces,
saying how things tended tend. Worlds
within her answer one without. The stray
and blemished shrivel on the stones.