Featured image: Ayọ̀délé—Joy Has Arrived Home, by Alex Gambacorta
You’re like a blossoming field of flowers vibrant from the sun’s light.
I’m but cold, dry, arid soil,
Neglected from nature’s nourishment
Yearning for life’s golden light
Awaiting for it to heal the wounds of the land
Now dark and barren but once a flourishing
Green garden of growth.
Longing for nature’s attention
Inside of this garden’s ghost is where I lie
Forgotten by the gardener of life.
Enraged by the loss of blossoming vibrant flowers.
Dianthus, once beautiful and sharp,
Engulfed by death’s shadow
Awaiting for the seasons to pass
To start to bloom once more,
Hoping the garden will return
Loosening this soil so life’s love may root
On throughout this cold, dry, arid soil
Veins of growing green
Engulf what was once gray and gone
Healing the soil and freeing from hate
Across from this field vibrantly gray
Turning lifeless, fading from nature’s gaze
Envious of what it once was
Barren now like the cold, dry, arid soil was
Alongside each other, so similar yet so different
Longing for nature’s green, loving, lushness
As the soil once was, but is now spreading
Nourishing soil to this vacant field
Clenching on to the thin, frail roots
Enveloping it with life, balanced by nature.
Noah Sandberg is a 2nd year Psychology major in the DPT program here at Marquette. He recently started writing poetry while taking a well-versed class in poetry fall semester and started writing as a hobby. When he’s not writing, he loves to draw and play saxophone.
Alex Gambacorta is a graduate student in the Marquette English department. She is a Teaching Assistant and intern for the Education Preparedness Program (EPP) and a graduate researcher for the Indigeneity Lab.