From Farm To Table -MLH Page 1
Written For Gary Copeland Lilley
From farm to table
Always a bounty
You, with blooded hands
and backs, who grew and picked
None to be shared in makeshift shanty
No tablecloth to cover emptiness
Blessings only prayed
Over ill gained silver plates
Piled high with greed
Eaten in the big house
Striven this harvest given
When many generations back
gave you hardtack
softened up by tears
Cornbread fed
Butter- less, and flavored
only with the seasoning of hope
Gritty bites into the mouths and bodies
hungering, hollow-cheeked for more
Raw boned and starved weak
Teeth breaking by tearing
thin strips of self to regurgitate
to toothless fledglings
in nestled branches, now chopped
Then forced and dropped
from the precipice of
Of humane comfort
Embryonic,newly broken
out of shells, they imprint
on demons who raise them up
to subordinate them down to hell
From Farm To Table page 2
Motto; Ever times are hard!
But keep plowing on
Without 20 acres or a mule
Blood and sweat enriching
the rich dark soil
Hands finally toil
to eat and reap all
they have sown
Hard earned land owned
Overtaxed taking again their share
Dingy not purely white sheets
do not innocently hang
drying gently wrinkle free in the wind
A harvest left to rot in trampled ground
With no bushel baskets left to full
Then to migrate and resettle once more Foundries of smoke and mirrors
Never leading to promise of purpose
Soul towns separated but successful,
razed, terrorized and burnt down
Then to relocate and reconstruct once more
Restoring home with familial selfhood and brotherhood within
their cast-away Communities
Finally getting along freely strong
Burdens while not lifted, still weighted,
never now for strapped shoulders
to bough low
Nourishment not a luxury but a surety
for most, and those still white bread poor,
now look out of un-shuttered windows
and justified open doors to clearly see
A way through to unity and equality
Is the table fare for many
served up savory?
Or covered up in fatty gravy?
We must be reminded
Who truly cultivated our Country fare
Enriching plenty for the power fed few
Tilling continually with no supper bell
From dawn to dark,
From birthing to grave
Let these overwintered seeds
planted, be encouraged to grow
Within the beauty and variety
of our common humanity
We must in our mutual
brief moments of mortality
with willing hands,
work the fields to feed us all MLH