Earthbound
By Katie Brimm
For Casey, and all farmers lost to suicide.
Rootless he leaves
The earth bound
Now to another
Dimension. Gone
Where we cannot follow, cannot
Feast upon the earthly delights
He has always grown
For us, he bred
Tomatoes that survive frost
That grow
Above six thousand feet
His feet will never touch
The ground where
His hands
Plunged into the rich loam
Whose universe also fed us
Its nutrients
Pulled through roots
Below us and now in us
The bounty of each past
Summer harvest lives
In our cells
In our community, we
Are made up
Of what he grew
And now we are made up
of what he left behind:
A fertile darkness where
The seeds he planted still live.
A baffling flourish come spring,
A future celebration of life.