JAGAT VILLAGE by Jarrod Ingles

Early on a late-summer morning

as the monsoon faded,

I watched a tribe of golden monkeys

descend the steep, slick side of a valley wall

and vanish into a farmer’s cornfield.

They tried not to sway the browning stalks

as they harvested ear after ripened ear.

Each knew that a hunger-rushed pluck

could stir the village into alarm.

Maybe I should have told someone

instead of sipping my masala tea,

but I felt the same conflict I often feel

watching deer slip into our soybeans at dusk

back home in eastern Kentucky.

In short, I didn’t know who I was rooting for

and would need many hours to decide.

So I drank my tea and watched the corn

and wondered whether the moving stalks

were simply swayed by the mountain wind

or if they danced in pink-palmed hands.

Jarrod Ingles is a first-generation college student who grew up in eastern Kentucky in the rural foothills of Appalachia. He now lives in Boston, Massachusetts where he practices environmental law and spends as much time as he can hiking, camping, or napping in city parks.