I first posted this as part of a November challenge last year to post, you guessed it, a poem a day. This one plays a bit on the rigours of farming – reeping and sowing – and its seeming ironies and impossibilities. Much like producing…a poem a day!

A Poem a Day

The wordsmith’s challenge: to produce a fully grown garden

in less than 24 hours. Plow down deep, furrough’d in sweat

and the searing summer sun baking whatever it touches.

Cast out fistfulls of seed into the shifting wind and coarse ground

where time and chance and powers above and below

cast out their wills or ills upon your tiresome toil.

–

An ankle turned, the back of the neck red, raw, pealing.

Old machines not meant for new work

retain their eccentricities despite your mechanical interloping.

Tender, anxious words spoken upon docile dirt,

your antediluvian blessing

meant to caress or careen a spark to light a fire all

too easily snuffed.

You trade your peace for her pregnancy.

–

Let loose your prayers for weather and time and the

vagaries of hope, if only to see once more

the perfection in a tiny handful of wheat.

–

Now, do it again tomorrow.