Photo by Stephen Anderson

Brother-Blood

A shriek cuts through silence over bruised ground.
A cry goes up, and brother-blood seeping down.
Broken reeds of barley and cracked heads fall
To soil — like kin — neither cultivated nor kept.

This our firstborn libation, the first-fruits in heart —
Murder and death. One human seed dead,
Another, rotten, grows amidst his blood.

Above that weeping field vultures circle low.
And the tall trees of Eden stand afar-off in the west.