Loose Lettuce Leaf Factory Tour

By Frances Macaulay Forde

Mon, 26 May 2025
  • 359 reads
2 comments
 

Brake squeal announced busload disembark

- not locals but a chattering multi-cultural arc.

 

Concentration torn from my romance book

I grabbed my bag resigned to factory look.

 

Avenues of squashed boxed green piled high

waited to be cleaned, soared like trees to sky.

 

Each delicate leaf plastic hands manipulated

dirt, leaves, slugs stuck like glue, castigated.

 

Unbidden, mouth skewered with distaste

my heart skipped to a stranger's smiling face

 

as he read the title of my breast-high novel,

lingering too long over words that grovelled...

 

Like turning loose leaves under cool water sprays,

my heart was plundered in a thousand ways...

 

Frances Macaulay Forde © 2011

Certificate 18
Poem
Written in Australia
Romance

Comments

Submitted by Jessiibear on

Oh, Frances! This has such a strong sensory pull—I felt like I was right there, tucked between the noise of the factory and the intimacy of that fleeting glance.

I love how you balanced grit and tenderness: the plastic hands, the slugs, the boxed greens—and then that brief moment with the stranger, how even that small pause lingers. The line “my heart was plundered in a thousand ways…” really stayed with me. There’s so much yearning folded into this.

Thanks for sharing this—it’s vivid and vulnerable in the best way.

 

Jessheart

Submitted by Frances Macaula... on

Thank you so much, Jessie - you got it!  So pleased you did.  You recognized the juxtapositioning throughout. Her dream came true - an imagined love story come to life!

Always appreciate your comments. 

Soundcloud:  https://soundcloud.com/search?q=FrancesMF