The Sower
Vincent van Gogh, 1888

The once sovereign songs
have been losing their music,
their remedies of healing,
the power to move,
and this scarred earth
never was pristine,
its beautiful flaws
a universal rule

Solace is hard to come by,
our spirit is jaded,
disheartened by angels
with halos grown dull
And heaven is crowded
with dying constellations,
mere fractions of the round
of death and rebirth

Chameleons we’ve become
at the whim of the seasons,
weeping through hilarity,
celebrating pain,

yet we undertake to dig
in a place long left fallow,
bruising our confusion
on fossils and roots

The light spills effortlessly
from the wounded and dying
gilding the hollows
their passing leaves behind,
and a cry sounds out,
a beating brass echo,
and the heart of creation
ruptures into gold

This still precious life
of perplexing evolution
sows its own kind of wonder
in wanton spill of seeds,
a planting so unexpected
blink and you might miss it,
the moment of harvest
in Elysian fields

Nora Leonard, October 2006