POEM 21

Wheat, wheat an ancient grain. Its knobby head is valued like gold.

Grind it smooth for flour or course for the bowl.

Its color is earthen, its aroma like dust from the plain.

In biblical days it was revered, plucked and stored as food for the gods

Give wheat the respect it is due. How low it has fallen from a certain grace.

Allergies spring from its crowned heads. Its stalks and stems once savored with no fear.

The touch of man can be fatal and destructive to his own rescuer.

We have rendered many things useless with our tampering and wheat has become our casualty.

It’s everywhere in divers foods, thickening, shoring up and tearing down.

That ancient golden grain reduced to an additive, stripped of it’s piety.