by Ken Sehested
I would love to think approaching
this table conferred visions of
leisurely picnics in green meadows
beside gentle bubbling streams,
with cooling breeze matched by
warm sunshine and birdsong in
nearby long leaf pine and hemlock.
Truth is, it’s more like unleavened
bread, hastily prepared under dark
skies when death angels rout the
countryside, on the eve of betrayal
and the cusp of terror, in a land on
the brink of ecological collapse and
lead-lined water pipes poisoning
the young and an infestation of
woolly adelgid leaching the life
from majestic forests.