The Shovel & the Song: A Poem

Chinquapin fields yielded more than just rows
Of okra, cotton, or tobacco leaves
Seventy years ago. A boy with hands
Borne to work like shovel and spade resolved
To do their task came up from those dirt fields.
His heart to the plow there and in school where
Among chalk-dusted rows stood a young girl
of same age and Spirit, from Monetta.
Her fingers formed to play piano keys.
Her heart and mind to love the little ones
And suffer them to sing the learning songs
Back Stitch’d with rhyme and imagination.
Together these two were planted, then grew
And went out in the world, growing as one.

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