TheInkWell Poetry Challenge | Week 5 – Grains of Salvation
Hi, Hiveans and thanks for stopping by!
I hope you can read my poem and it’d be lovely that you left a comment if you feel like doing it. I’d be honored.
This is my entry for the poetry challenge brought by @TheInkWell (check their post here for week 5). They are doing an amazing job; check it out and perhaps you’d like to join in.
Royalty free picture from Pxfuel
Grains of Salvation
Hungry, the searching fingers sink
disappearing into the watery terrace.
An earthly breath caresses
exuberant green crests, emergent.
The feet, the ankles, they know the roots;
they know the grounds
to endure the toil in this transient labor.
A myriad of toes frolic in muddy luxury,
while two gaping eyes rest in the distance and marvel:
“Look! The tender grains of salvation.”
The hearty children are in their fresh husks, still
alien to humanity, but akin
to the camouflaged hand of the peasant.
Their moist will be drained;
their meekness and their mildness, devoured,
tossed among the fangs of the wonders
of civilization.
Beyond the lush fields, they’ll be a million of millions
filling the round bellies of a round world,
for a life’s thin sake.
Royalty free picture from Pxfuel
A Bowl of Rice Makes Wonders
I loved white rice when I was little, but my mother never left me eat it unless my bowl contained some animal protein, too. She was blunt.
I’d learned to take things for granted. I was little and lived a plenty life in a home well provided for. We were poor in many ways, but I never realized it. We had food on the table everyday, so I knew we weren’t “poor” like my grandmother told me about our family during the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in the 50’s. But all those stories (about going to bed without supper or without any meal at all, or hiding from the police) seemed even farther than they were--surreal. Then a really dark and long hour started for my country, and I found myself working two jobs, 85 hours a week… and reliving a story of the past (which end is yet to be written). Now I don’t take things for granted, but it’s been a high price to pay.
Ever since I learned what is like to provide for your children, human and animal, in times of scarcity and oppression, knowing no hero will come to the rescue, I finally understood what a great and malicious enterprise the fear of hunger is. Paradoxically, I also learned there’s some sort of sanctity to it. One day--or many days--I was walking down the street and saw some people eating from the garbage, then I knew a bowl of white rice makes wonders indeed.
It is then when you think everything is over, but you realize there are others doing a lot worse than you are, that you understand the holiness of a grain of rice and how it is worth all the effort. It is not a miracle that just happens; it's holy work.
Excellent poem, @marlyncabrera. You approach the theme "a bowl of rice" not only written in a very striking way (in a contemporary style), but also with a vision that resignifies the richness of rice, which is metonymy of food, which many people in this world need (and Venezuela is a new and pathetic case). Greetings.
Thank you very much, @josemalavem. In many ways, rice is like bread, I guess. But you and I know that even that is expensive for many of us in Venezuela right now (even worse in quarantine). It was really easy to connect my feelings to this topic; it took a lot of meditation for me to write this poem, though, for there's so much to be written about this.
I love this poem, @marlyncabrera, as well as the commentary that follows. It's hard to imagine true hardship and hunger, for those of us who have never had to experience it. But your poem brings that awareness to the surface. If only all the world's children had plenty to eat.
Thank you very much,@jayna.
Your comment and your empathy mean a lot to me. I think children and animals have been the most affected by the economic crisis in my country. It’s heartbreaking. But believe me, there’s so much we haven’t learned yet.
Viktor Frankel compared suffering of different people those in a holocaust and those in everyday life, he said they are like a gas and they fill what ever container they find themselves.
Lovely work!!
Thanks a lot for your reading, @ebingo
Indeed. I'm not qualified to judge what kind of suffering is justified, but it seems there's always a good reason for it, depending on the person.
Thanks again :)