Quick Fix

Long ago men and women used to garden
taking from the earth
food and flowers,
Learning the importance of different plants
and the patience necessary to nurture them
until they grew and flowered producing
fruit and seeds for the following harvest.

Some plants needed to be planted
year after year, others grew from
established roots, yet others were bulbs
divided like little cells just below the earth’s
surface needing to be removed from
the ground and replanted in the Spring.

Patience, the ever present virtue,
was required to go year after year
protecting plants from insects and disease,
facing droughts or floods, as well as
freezing or scorching temperatures,
finally harvesting in the summer.

Today we expect to get
food in local stores,
but we don’t want
to cook it,
instead we expect it
prepackaged and already assembled
or home delivered and we become
impatient if we have to wait over
five minutes for it to be prepared.

So many offspring are now overweight,
yet undernourished, and always ravenous,
eating all this pre-made food
in one sitting. Maybe they are seeking
the two ingredients that are key
to being properly nourished.
When food is grown and prepared at home
it takes patience as well as love.