On, In, and Around Mondays: Of Orphans and Lands

On my counter sits granola. Near the stove, last night's sauce. In the refrigerator, assorted fruits and vegetables: lettuce, broccoli, apples, clementines. It's a good day, isn't it?

But my mind is with the orphans of the world. Hard as I have tried all weekend, I could write of nothing else but the unexpected foodie fashion in which I care for them.

There are myriad ways to consider the issue of orphan care, and we're thinking about a lot of them over at TheHighCalling.org. But this is my way, decided more than a decade ago, because of what I learned and could not unlearn...

Motherlands

Somewhere between
the four pickles
special sauce
lettuce and cheese
on a sesame seed bun,
mother's were trekking
to foreign villages,
tripping their way
under the weight of
brown-skinned babies
who still lived off milk,
not meat, who would
never remember the land
nor the cattle that
moved in to take up
residence where heritage
would have placed these children
until they could chew
and then, after years and years,
not chew,
then hold the babies
of their babies who'd
live off milk (and maybe
a bit of mashed papaya).

Somewhere between news
of that exodus,
and the cattle lowing
'midst remains
of black-girdled trees,
and the pickles
and the sauce and the occasional
unwanted gristle,
I read about
the rains that didn't come,
a world away,
and a widow who
trekked to the land lords
begging for another year
to grow lentils (or was it
jasmine rice?),
but the cost was too high
and there was no more
milk, and no meat
and nowhere to journey,
so she sold her trinity
of children and decided
it wasn't worth
scrounging for wheat
without a table and soft brown
arms and night laughter
and spice (no sauce).
And the land lords probably
didn't notice
when she never came back,
and I wondered if anyone
wrapped her in white linen strips,
spread pink petals across memories,
and what the children would think
if they knew about the pickles,
the sesame seeds,
the white bun that
never fills.
And it was then I knew
I would never eat anything
but vegetables...
for the rest of my
landed
life.


Eaters... must understand that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.

— Wendell Berry, "The Pleasures of Eating," In The Spirit of Food


This poem is offered as part of TheHighCalling's Random Acts of Poetry, and also for One Shot Wednesday. And, we're reading The Spirit of Food. Join us?

AND... the new Laura Boggess special...



(You go, girl. :)



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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

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