shot glass
title
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Deborah Bayer


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Fertilizer: A Sonnet

She plows the furrows, pushes past her wants.
Can she imagine rows and columns, summed
on spreadsheets as the basis for her work?
Or, does she dig down to her ballet class,

dance to Tchaikovsky all in lacy-white tulle
stitched with plastic violets for the Waltz?
She isn't graceful, but she moves with joy,
forgets herself, and driven to succeed,

puts gashes in the ground, and the manure
comes with the strain of overtime, and yet,
beneath the stony ground, each seed still sheds
its coat. The rootlets reach for sustenance.

The weak shoots seek the sun, and bidden or
unbidden, here, new blades of palest green.