He labors on shifting from tree to tree
With corn-laden feet and scarred hands
Concealed by the melanin cover
Of his wrinkled and time-pealed skin
A man stranded to pedigree
To the inter-generational heirloom of his time-tested craft
What no bamboo hooks could ever unhook
Nor mechanized monsters could ever colonize
A man with dark tan skin and curly locks
Born to a humble heritage of coconut pluckers
Die-hard islanders practicing a timeless trade
Holding one's life on the tips of his palms
With the underside of the sarong
Rising between the buttock cheeks
And sweat trickling down
On tanned hemispheres of a drawn face
Armed with a razor-sharp knife in hand
Plucking coconuts perched on the zenith of a coconut tree
He knows the perils of a slip
The magnetism of gravity
The distance to the nearest hospice
Yet he labors on firmly holding
The bough of a coconut tree
A man plucking the worth of a few rupees
To feed the fledgling innocence
Gazing on from a mud-crafted veranda
Of a run-down house
Yet the tireless warrior strolls on
Perched high in to the heavens
With nimble feet and a grip of steel
Tireless in toil, soldiering on
In these battlefields of fate
Armed with an iron will and the resilience of spirit
A humble man with no bank account
With no bed to hold his vertebral column
With no color on his plate of rice
With no tooth brush near a sun-parched well
Embattled by the ruthlessness of fate
Battling on from sunrise to sunset
With treacle-coated dreams and toddy nights
Lingering on to the resolute embrace of time
A simple man that could do no wrong
Even when the gods could do no right
Dilantha Gunawardana
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-coconut-plucker-in-sri-lanka/
