
Stuff grows left alone
Soil and sunlight are given
Beauty we behold
Copyright Francis 2022
Stone below the ground
Grandeur obscures hidden pasts
Where we have come from
Copyright Francis 2022
In the sparse garden
he toils with the heavy soil
and the cold east wind
Copyright Francis 2021
He dug deep in the soil,
the loam and silt of a fertile marsh;
from a long line of broken-back men,
inured to suffering and pain,
consistent with their DNA
from far distant crescents.
The men who toiled and fed the idle,
who gave their all to generations,
many to rot in the quagmires
of pointless conflicts, or like him —
alone, prostrate in his garden.
Copyright Francis 2021
copyright Francis Barker 2020