From Farm To Table belated Juneteenth

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