Ode to a Forager

 I am working with a group called Poetic Justice.  We do a program involving writing with women in prison.  We both work on the same assignments and share them with each other.  This assignment involved writing an ode to ones self about one or more attributes that you like about yourself  This is mine...

Ode to a Forager

 

When you were young, in meadows wandered

At home in wild, and quiet places

Saddened when the bountiful beauty was lost and squandered

By those taking more, as if it were a race

 

Now siting by a whispering stream

You point to food growing along the banks

Others fail to care, or so it seems

And do not stop to offer thanks

 

Will the gifts given to sustain all the living

be treasured with surprise and wonder

Honored beauty, nurture, healing….

Or lost to us as short sighted work to plunder.