Food for Death

Food for death-

all of life is food for the grave.

Will I nourish the soil

that has borne my life?

Will I repay it well,

the earth of my grains and fruits

and forefathers?

Will I bear vine-ripened youth

and delicious communion?

For those who play in the glow

of the harvest sun,

coming together at a table lovingly laden

with the fruits of my flesh,

oh, I hope to join them there

and give them the joys of my toil

under the sun that tends the fields,

and watches over them by day.

Will I help make healthy

a generation that so earnestly

needs to till this soil,

to feel it in their fingers and in their bones?

For they will one day be food for earth,

and I hope they nourish well.