Back to Savannah

August, 1865

You trudge home,
finally, after months under
the sun and the dust,
shades darker, bronzed
and withered and caked
up to your knees in mud
and more.

Your sons have grown
into farmers while
you were gone.
They have tilled the fields
and sown the seeds,
and although you look
like you might fall over,
you wander out into
the rows of potatoes, kneel down
and pick up a handful of earth.

Only some of it washes off.
Much of it never will,
but you are home
and that is enough.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.
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