Friday, August 27, 2010

Grain

Grain

A truck is loaded with grain,
filled with this dust that will
build the foods our nation’s meals
are structured around. Like many
crops that we hack from boundless
grasses into specks, it is uncountable.
One crumb, a big rig’s freight,
both grain. The market responds
when we call it whole, slice less
of it away from itself. I can’t fault
us our hunger for what is whole,
what is wholesome. We grow grain,
tear it, grind it up, and feed our bodies
with it. We construct our food pyramid
on top of it, are told to eat six to eleven
servings of it. Ancient civilizations
would rightly call this worship.
And why shouldn’t we identify this
practice as sacred: fill a big rig
with cut grain, and send it shuttling
down black roads that cut through
fields of tall, nodding stalks.

6 comments

  1. Brilliant thoughts come to your mind, don't they? "Ancient civilizations call it worship.." : ) I wonder what aliens watching call it...Have a great weekend Storialist! xo

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  2. Worship is a way I never thought, of the ways we feed ourselves. One of my favorite lines: "Like many crops that we hack from boundless grasses into specks, it is uncountable."

    And this incredible line: "Fill a big rig with cut grain, and send it shuttling down black roads that cut through fields of tall, nodding stalks." It makes of the grain an omniscient thing, surprisingly, approving of this practice of harvesting.

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  3. Yes, I believe we would call it worship... so much of our lives revolves around little things like eating grain and trying to put into our mouths what is healthy.

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  4. I love reading about food. Fast Food Nation and What We Eat are 2 of my favorite non-fiction books on the subject.

    I enjoyed your ode to grain!!

    PS: I worship food, especially in the form of chocolate!

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  5. From Therese B -- Almost a Fertile Crescent psalm, a song or hymn to grain. Grain as the staff of life. I love how the pyramid image suggests the ancient civilizations. I love the scale of comparing grain to truck; it's all small, uncountable, compared to the centuries it took to develop agriculture. Agriculture made civilization possible: turned nomads into dwellers, grazing animals into herds, encouraged trade of food, objects, words, culture. It's all in this rich psalm.

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