Praise Song for the Bagel, A Poem for Watching Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration on TV
Each morning we go and do our business,
we flush and we jump in the shower
or not, drying and then dressing.
All inside us is hunger. All inside us is pang and rumble, yearn and ache, we long for something touching our tongues.
Someone is scrambling an egg, boiling water for coffee, Popping a Tart, heating the things that taste better hot.
A woman in a hairnet waits on tables. A line cook examines the melting butter. A hostess says Please. Let me seat you now.
Say it plain: that many have slaved over this meal. Sing the names of those who brought it here, who plowed the fields, planted the crops,
picked the onions and the wheat, kneaded batch by batch the glorious dough they would then roll into perfect little rings.
Praise song for the bakers, praise song for the meal. Praise song for every boiled little bite, the chewing-it-up at kitchen tables.
Some live by you are what you eat, others by an apple a day keeps the doctor away. But what if the mightiest food is bagels?
Praise song for getting something in our stomachs.
All inside us is hunger. All inside us is pang and rumble, yearn and ache, we long for something touching our tongues.
Someone is scrambling an egg, boiling water for coffee, Popping a Tart, heating the things that taste better hot.
A woman in a hairnet waits on tables. A line cook examines the melting butter. A hostess says Please. Let me seat you now.
Say it plain: that many have slaved over this meal. Sing the names of those who brought it here, who plowed the fields, planted the crops,
picked the onions and the wheat, kneaded batch by batch the glorious dough they would then roll into perfect little rings.
Praise song for the bakers, praise song for the meal. Praise song for every boiled little bite, the chewing-it-up at kitchen tables.
Some live by you are what you eat, others by an apple a day keeps the doctor away. But what if the mightiest food is bagels?
Praise song for getting something in our stomachs.
20
01 2009
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Great poem for a great day!