I say your name and I do grieve. All names
dredge the deep, but they fail to take heed
and sprout. Hereabouts, mustard seed got choked
by conglomerate needs rendered too economic.
Scrub grass debriefs our fields. Old Dutch
farmers sing about crop yield and claim
to have never yielded, but wrote wills to sons
who refuse to break the back of the land
open for cheques. The future left as adherents
to our religion rocket down untolled highways
that irrigate rural graveyards. But look –
in the field, see wounds the mortgage
might heal. Land remains, awaiting the farmer
of future nostalgias. Mom, I miss you.
This differgreen is slow, wild, beautiful assertion.

Shane Neilson is a poet, physician, and critic from New Brunswick. He is currently completing his PhD in the representations of pain at McMaster University as a Vanier Scholar. Most of his work concerns disability. Head Pressed to Stone at St. Vincent de Paul Cemetery will appear in New Brunswick, his forthcoming title from Biblioasis in the fall.