[On the road to the farm]

On the road to the farm
weed stalks, brown, broken,
tangled, usurp the ditches
where scabs of snow sealed
with icy edges shrink in
the noon sun. Trees bare as
corpses lean toward the
moaning electric wires.
The road itself cuts through
the farms, a scar of asphalt
between barbed wire fences,
and a whiff of decay seems to
taint the wind that breathes
over the hard facts of time.
But the signs of sickness
to the eye of the beholder
invites a false premise to
our assumptions. Nothing is
so sure as the force which
keeps faith in root and seed
during the sleep of the season.
It is a wonder, beyond the
heart’s imagining, precious
as love, to feel in the deep
crease of being, the response,
the thrust, the opened shell,
the heartbeat, to what may be
the first act of creation.