Dancin' Moon Songcast Ep. 72 Birthright, Humpty & Grass Clippings Like Tea Leaves | POETRY SERIES EPISODE!

Birthright

 

Jacob stole his birthright,

being clever and tricky

and gets the bad rap

on account of greed,

but what about the sin of Esau

who sold his birthright for a single

bowl of soup?

 

Sure, at the time

it seemed reasonable

Esau seeing nothing but his hunger

—gut wrenching hunger

but emptiness doesn't always

render us clear of sight—

sometimes it shapes desperate eyes

and snatching hands.

 

I imagine Esau there at table,

hunger sated, realizing now

the emptiness of the bowl

the emptiness—

what he'd given up...

 

or maybe not,

maybe Esau simply belched

and excused himself, because

satiation doesn't always

render us mindful of

consequence.

 

Keep brother stuffed;

he'll never know he's being taken.

 

And sometimes my own hunger

is the voice I hear telling me to short-sell

for a few immediate spoonfuls...

 

I have seen the children

of stolen birthrights,

stolen, in the end, by their

feeders--

by those who have something

to sell them... and something to gain

from the selling.

 

And I'm a teacher

for Heaven's sake,

with a bowl of soup

and some hungry students

willing to eat

what I'm dishing up--

indiscriminately--

filling the pits of swollen bellies

with what's been mandated with

what the research says will surely

fill them.

 

And I could spend days feeding

them data soup chock-full of

standards

in a warm broth of best practice

and we could raise the bar

make AYP

incentivize the path

till no one's left behind.

 

But what if something has

been squandered while I was

ladling—

what if they've traded

some blood-right,

some unique mark...

 

What if we educators

have helped them trade

a birthright

for a bowl of

compliance soup?

*******************

 

Humpty

 

That afternoon he'd been stripped

not so much like a banana or an antique

chair, but

 

quite like some kind of ice

sculpture, having yet the chain-saw grooves

to prove the artist's process—

 

fresh from the freezer, unsheeted

for show...

 

He was now gathering

into a puddle

under his own feet

and the hors d'vours were warming

(infinitesimal buzzing of flies,

cheese dark'ning ever-so-sligh