PEACE CHANT IN REDWOODS
Sweet bread that sustains us,
our senses devour you!
You come as the stellar jay's yell,
the loud wind that pounds
while redwoods creak. You're the day
that gives itself for us.
Our eyes lick your white trillium
and redwood sorrel. They swallow
your old man's beard, that green lichen
that abounds in clumps. They drink
the fog that refuses to part. Sweet day,
you are the unbroken bread. Our hands
taste you in rough douglas fir bark
in soft redwoods, in the crispness
of frigid streams. Your're the scent
of damp oyster mushrooms, of chantarelles
and soil. We taste you in miner's lettuce
and in fennel's licorice tang. Sweet bread,
we stand at our own center and at yours.
The day that feeds will grab us back
and make us food for moss and snails.
We walk with this knowledge, and know
the mutual hunger that sustains us
and keeps us alive. Together we're strong
as granite and wind. You're our partner, our meal,
the mouth that will take us.
Sweet bread
sustain us
in wartime
when we
walk
in an
orphanage.
Its halls
echo
with voices
of dead
parents
and missing
friends
and one
deep note
from a
funeral
organ. We
smell
wax from
burnt candles
that stand
before
portraits
and the sweet
smell of
lilies
that mourn.
We smell
floor wax,
the stench
of absence. The
light
in this place is
filled
with gray dust.
The linoleum
shines like
caskets
when sunshine
hits them.
Preserve us from
the taste
of stale bologna,
of cheap
mayonaise, processed
cheese food late at
night.
Bread, defend us
from surplus blankets
that scratch and
mattresses
so flat they
don't
respond to our kicks
and shrieks when we
yell and mourn. Sustain
us in this
draining place
called war, this
structure
that grows and dominates
the land. Call us to granite,
to river, to wind, to
redwoods.
Help us turn this orphanage
into moon
by
Paul Belz
Paul Belz
PO Box 14358
Berkeley, Ca. 94701
© Copyright 1999, Paul Belz. All rights reserved.
