Cutting Earth
Take a spade and cut a sod one spit square,
Lift that clod of earth, then identify
Precisely where the roots of the nation lie,
Has a border line been drawn clearly there,
Showing where one soil ends and the rest starts?
Judge just how heavy it is and appraise
Yourself as to how many lives it weighs,
Estimate the number of broken hearts
Required to thoroughly saturate it
With the blood of martyrs, or supposed foe,
Or simple patriots who think they know
Their national story. When they relate it
Though, they find the fiction reveals that earth’s
Everyone’s, everywhere, of equal worth.
D. A.