POEM: A Meager Harvest

This hard-hoed soil’s ceding nothing now.
An early frost has taken this year’s crops,
and still the farmer, with unyielding brow,
stone-sets his jaw and bends to tend his plot.

There’s precious little left: a sheaf of wheat,
a pale, emaciated gourd or two.
It cannot be enough. From weary knees
he stands, resolved to yet again make do.

He lifts his desperate, thin, fear-furrowed face
to search the slate-cold, cloud-scuffed skies above:
“We thank you, Lord, for these, Thy gifts,” he prays,
and then, again: “Lord, let it be enough.”

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