Salt Beans

I loved to work the bean slicer handle
G-clamping the stand to the table-edge
round-turning the spindle of thrift
like chance in a sure election.

When beans could not be sold
when there was a glut of beans
the policy was thrift and human application
in the economy of our own garden
we returned the wealth of the farm
when it was devalued anywhere else.

once, Mum got me to wind the handle
while she pointed beans down the chute
in train, one at a time continuously
as if it was all the one bean which hit
the circling blades and sliced diagonally
to splatter onto the placed tray of place
in careful catch and preservation.

The vegetables were given short shrift
beans emerged as a democracy
cut into bared cross-sections
made common in all its inner stuff
with darker walls of green fibre
around the gel and undone juices
cutting through embryo of half-formed
seeds growing in the pith

The whole body of the beans
was pared into skewed bits
and the packed in the old crock
with a liberal politic of salt
filtering down and stirred
to cover every cut bean surface.

9 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll