Life goes on. With spring and the first full moon
after the equinox, comes the ploughing again,
and then the planting. What goes back to the Earth,
ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
gives itself up to the endlessness of the seasons,
the rich ground and those that carry on
working the land to earn a living.
Generation after generation,
fathers have become sons and grandsons.
There is not much time to spare for mourning.

Those farmers who worked these fields
with their scythes and ploughs and tractors
are memorialized in the tobacco,
the corn and the sweet potato.