Overhead, a swinging lamp
casts shadows amidst the damp
of a derelict house that still stands
against time’s winds and sands:
A testament to an ingenious man
and the workings of his rough-hewn hands.
On quiet nights, it still lights the way
to fallow field and vine-choked hay.
Tasking their master to return and reap,
wind-blown stalks bend and weep.
Though I strive and turn the wheel
to mill my sparse grain,
I covet the parched land,
avidly seeking, vain.
In every revolution
I hope for difference and not of same;
I beg God for the life-giving
weeping, changing rain.
Upon the fallow field
Against the farmer’s reason
An insistent blade of grass
Shooting out of season
“What folly, what stupidity,”
Said the farmer with his hoe
And promptly dug a hole
Where the blade did grow
And through that winter, it remained
A dark stain unwashed by rain
Never covered by a gentle snow
Never graced by the sun’s sweet glow
An empty hole where a blade did grow
And in the spring, that farmer found
And reaped what he had sowed;
A whole field, spot and all,
Insistent, fallow
RED GLADIOLA 