[Trevor Conway]

REVISION:

(Structure changed, some elements removed, including last stanza, some changes of wording too)

Wheat

Once a slender face in the crowd
of wind-waltzing stems
on a modest patch of the Middle East,
now, you can walk for miles
across distant continents
and encounter barely another leaf.

We levered weeds
from stubborn soil,
plucked mucky stones from dead gestation.
Shallow canals
slaked its thirst,
while fences foiled fugitive rabbits.

With hernias and slipped discs,
bodies inflamed by arthritis,
we made a trade:
our life on foot
for days of bending over
as we roamed our meadows
and mastered a plant with baskets and blades,
that somehow, it seems, mastered us.


ORIGINAL:

Wheat

Once a slender face in the crowd
of countless stems waltzing in the wind,
a wild grass enamoured farmers
on a modest patch of the Middle East.

Millennia passed:
you can walk for miles and hours
across swathes of other continents
without encountering another leaf.

Enslaved, we levered weeds from soil,
plucked mucky stones from dead gestation.
Our shallow canals abolished its thirst,
and fences foiled fugitive rabbits.

We traded a life on foot to settle,
to stay put and roam our meadows,
mastering wheat with baskets and blades,
blind to how it mastered us.

Inheriting hernias and slipped discs,
the cold crippling of arthritis
punctuated the bones of those
who tended fields until their bodies failed.

Think of this – a plant’s success –
when cereal crunches against your jaw,
when you cut a slice
from your loaf of bread.