Image source: WN / Sayali Santosh Kadam |
Twenty acres of cabbages
ranked in military green,
harvest coming soon.
My nostrils twitch
with that raw-earth smell,
and I think
of soldiers’ helmets
on rifle stocks
standing between
pairs of boots
in the sand.
Eric A. Weil lives and teaches in Elizabeth City, NC. This poem is from a series tying the landscape and wildlife of eastern NC to an inescapable weariness about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Eric has published two chapbooks, A Horse at the Hirshhorn and Returning from Mars.