A Singular Kind of Anguish

The placards scream in the narrow urban canyons,

and in the stolid gray town squares carefully

rimmed by sterile green rectangles.

Here they march in cadence, in voice and step,

the memory of shotgun and shepherd

distinct for some, lore for others, yet crystalline

as if yesterday, as black brush strokes hoisted above

bellow a collective suffocation of four hundred years.

And now, fifty years past a codification of healing,

a new eruption, to again seek the weed and its root,

to be gripped firmly in hand and pulled straight and true

to unearth the strands that stretch to depths as they

seek nourishment in the darkest of earth, to flourish,

hidden and safe from opprobrium.