Syndic Literary Journal

CARGO

We released you today, sending you forth

in frosty vessels so lovingly made

in pans and milk carton molds.

A flotilla of ice boats embedded

with flowers from our gardens and filled

with a cargo of ash.

Six middle-aged women wading

into the Russian River, forming a circle,

for a recitation of poetry

to send you on your way.

I imagined you leisurely floating past

rock and redwoods, our flowers parting ways

with you as our boats melted, you slowly

disbursing into the current,

drifting by your house in Guerneville

then on to Duncans Mills where you’d wish

you could stop for a latté like we used to do

on our way to Goat Rock.

But you had other plans.

You sank to the bottom.

Freed yourself from our holds.

Relieved us of duty.

Our poem cut short,

icebergs bobbing in the water,

you hastened to the open sea

in a bloom of grey silt,

rushing

to that special place

where waters mingle,

fresh into salty.

SAVING SEEDS

My grandmother saved seeds,

spooning the slippery innards

of cantaloupes, cucumbers and tomatoes

into a strainer.

She rinsed some, fermented others

then placed them on paper to dry.

It’s how she guaranteed next year’s garden;

fed her family. She’d be shocked

at how we’ve transformed the earth

into a commodity; privatizing and modifying

seeds until they are no longer seeds

but intellectual properties.

How did we determine that seeds

could be patented and owned,

that our interconnectedness should be

through greed, not seed?

As a kid, Monsanto dazzled me at Disneyland

riding through the tunnel of inner space

in the Atommobile of Tomorrowland.

Everything seemed possible then.

Better living through chemicals

and master molecules. Turns out,

it’s all a lie. This mono-Monsanto culture

is starving us to death.

The honeybees were the first to know,

the first to go,

but can we be far behind?

If tomorrow is always built on today

like the voice in the tunnel said,

is it too late to save the seeds,

to save ourselves?