Airplane Window View

Underneath wing shadows

were paisley fields

with river tails, trailing

like curling thread.

It pieced and stitched

together

odd shapes of all sizes into

a crazy quilt.

History says paisley

was once a design

woven for mourning.

Easy to believe

as paisley 

and tear drops

lay the same 

lament upon the land.

No till is the accepted way of planting now. It was disturbing to see such progress up close as we visited family in North Dakota. The fields were being harvested. Sixty bushels an acre instead of the meager eighteen of thirty years ago. Afterwards, they spray to kill weeds. With poison. Round-up ready or poison coated seeds are then drilled into the clean, weed free fields. More toxins are sprayed on throughout the growing season. It is dead dirt, not to be mistaken for loamy soil, alive with living things.

I felt sad for the young farmers trying to survive and feed their families. They sit high and removed on the ways of monoculture's big tractors, insulated from the dying moans of the soil.

I feel sad for us, that we eat bread, made with dead wheat, poisoned from the beginning and several times after. It is altered, bleached and separated from its center of life.

We willingly eat bread made from poisoned wheat without a kernel!

When our bodies react as if violated, we are told we're intolerant of gluten and believe it.