A Certain Gleaning

The land is barren where you used to grow,

I did not know

That you were finite.

Searching the wheat thrown out with the chaff,

I look for your face.

How careless, the reaping of the past.

I collect the scattered pieces of you,

Every morsel, suddenly precious.

I bathe them in vinegar and sugar

and salt water tears,

Seal them in tight and store them away,

And hope there is enough to feed me for a lifetime.

How much longer will I remember

The taste of your laughter?

Sweet and smoky and brimming with life.

How soon will I forget what it feels like,

To be belly full of your warmth?

The fear spreads through me like an aching hunger.

I have cared so little for gardening,

Taking for granted the wealth upon my table.

Now that I have sampled the bitterness of regret,

The way the mouth grows sour,

Throat stripped raw from the bile burn of it,

I find I cannot stomach the flavor.

So I dig, barehanded, into the cool earth,

Water the fields with sweat and tears.

As the world grows cold and dead,

I cull and cleave and cherish,

And as the spring returns on a sea of shoots and blossoms,

I caress every bud and pray that something here will outlast me,

So I will never know

What it is

To starve.