Turn Aside Freshly Cut Soil Poem by Mark Heathcote

A poem should cultivate your heart & soul
It should riddle out every rock & stone
Turn aside freshly cut soil like a scroll
Driving straight furrows till the seed is sown.
There to harvest the grain these men must toil
Dig with their brawny, weak minds a new earth
Labour as though their way home would uncoil
Like a flower, that's been doubled, in its girth.
All this, a good poem can endeavour to do
But often they're far & few that written
Can shine some fresh light or cast some fresh dew
Everything that's written is, rewritten.
It's no use cultivating the topsoil
If it already has a bountiful spoil.