Spring in Evil Times

He looked across his land lying loose
and fresh. Frogs croaked. Bamboo swayed slowly.
Peach trees budded most delicately pink
and a faint mist rose,
silver as moonlight.

He wished to see no human being,
those left of the winter’s starving in the land
of famine and war. What is true these days
but a shadow,
thin and grey.

“I have admired Buck since I was a teenager, and I still do – in part because of what she wrote and in part because of why she wrote. I was influenced, I believe, by her adoption of children to adopt my two amazing daughters.” — Susan Landgraf about her choice of “The Good Earth” by Pearl S. Buck for her page 143 poem.