February 21, 2016, Prescott-

24. tower, kettle, hawk, charm, cotton

This little verse is about a tower, and the fields below.

A group of slaves found themselves set free,

The tower once home to their masters,

Became theirs to oversee.

The crop they grew was cotton,

Their fields were often sodden.

The moisture also led to evil,

in the form of  dreadful weevils.

Now, the ex-captives were not simple-minded,

nor to solutions were they blinded.

On a cool spring morning,

they met and talked.

Of a sudden,

they heard a squawk.

The tower’s roof

was now home to a hawk.

“How do we get our bird friend

to like weevils?”, one mused.

“Let us spread some kettle corn!”,

another newly freed man enthused.

“This will draw some swamp rats in,

the hawk will swoop down and feast on the vermin.

Once the rats have been decimated,

the raptor will seek another way to be sated.

He will spot the busy weevils,

make several meals of them,

and the cotton, reap, we will!”

So it went, that the men worked hard,

their own well-being, to safeguard.

They managed to charm some ladies from town,

and families soon sprang up.

The team was no longer trodden down.