The Heart of Rice

forthcoming in Bainbridge Press Grain Anthology.

                    Human beings have less genetic material than rice.

                                                                The Human Genome Project

In it, some thing tender waits in stillness,

the promise of any seed to become more.

Do not think of white rice quick cooked from

an orange box, but of its brown dancing life in

a field, what it does with the sun and air even at night, of its

duties, the duties of any plant to transform

its share of animal exhalations into plump

and fruiting air, to root itself in what it needs, to take

a tall stand.  I am not talking of intentionality in the husk

sharp and anxious as it breaks open into loss

of self, I am not speaking of anthropomorphism, only

of what it is, the knuckled stem of it, its papery uses, its leafy

glyphs.  Think of a planted field of rice, flooded,

or wild rice in the eddy of a northern river, duck haven, fragrant,

the art of one, the grace of the other, and why shouldn’t

the glyphs of its genes exceed ours? They execute such singular

order, while we move host to so many unlikely, unnamed, some

what damaged or fragmented others (is this finally the meaning

of our fall? or our salvation?).  Think of rice, the many-in-one of it, nothing

special, but lovely in its meadow sailing, the Eolian harp

strings of it singing, its right place on the whole earth,

its reliable shelf life.  Rice, saffroned,  in community

upholding the creole sauce of our dinner,  the thick curry

of our shrimp. Plain rice filling small bowls again and again.