By Chelsea Davis

The ties that bind can also break.

One rope plowed rows in both our wrists.

At harvest-time our scars would wake.

Our father taught our hands to shake

and flinch. Against our skin he’d twist

and tie new binds, with mind to break.

He coiled his neck with rope to make

in silo bare his quietus

one harvest-time, his scars awake.

His crop was yours to leave or take.

You spread new soil, but seeds resist.

They know no ties that bind or break.

The earth will yield for no man’s sake,

though skin may bruise beneath your fists.

Come harvest-time, new scars awake,

and soon your starving hands will ache

to hold the cords that he made hiss.

The ties that bind again will break

at harvest-time, when scars awake.

Chelsea Davis is a Junior at Swarthmore College, and is currently studying abroad in Dakar, Senegal.