In the beginning, there were
talking stalks of candy sweet corn,
fat happy pepper plants
and jeweled ruby tomatoes,
pirouetting up from the rich earth,
each green leaf another taste of Eden.
                    Each tiny stalk and curly-q’d vine
                    quenched on the sweat of my father’s hands,
                    each root tenderly curling the base of his spine.

Now, the ground is scarred,
mouths of soil thrown open, gaping wild;
this land is a sandy grimace garnished,
gouged by the murky waters of August
and the chemical cures restless to roam.
                   My father, gazing on his ghost of Eden past,
                   closes his heavy lids over melting eyes and
                   feels the furrows to the bone, the bone.