Food For Love

Our table is set with the infinite efforts of a universe alive. Can we ever fully appreciate the food that sustains us? Dishes, plates and four sleepy people encircle sauteed apples with vanilla honey yoghurt and cornbread. It is a moment of transformation, every element awake in its reckoning.

May we reflect the wisdom of our food.

Precious honey has been taken from the hive, our bees work tireless in life and death humming to the flower's center. Veiled in white, I pledged my efforts to their keeping while the harvest thick and golden sweet poured from the comb between my gloved fingers. I promise not take an ounce more than they will eat, and their hive is in my care.

The yoghurt has cultured on my counter, slowly stiffening to a tart and creamy white. This milk has traveled in the hands of a farmer that I know, across our broad county, from a goat who offered herself in trade for her keeping. Whether this exchange is fair is a question I hope we all ponder for as long as we enjoy her efforts.

Corn has been harvested from the plot across the street. The earth there had baked with spotty lawn for a decade until I mulched and planted it with broken heart and wildly open mind. I taste the moment now and then, transformed to gritty sweetness. This corn came willingly in the stewardship of my family and community. I have lifted it from the stalk, dried and ground it for our bread. This meal is an offering from the earth in our care. Will our efforts to sustain her be equal to the gifts she has bestowed?

Apples grew willynilly wild upon the neighbor's tree. Trinidad and I brought crates early on a Saturday morning in August, dew still on the grass. I stretched tall on a ladder with the picker balanced precariously in hand filling box after box. Trinidad got bored, sat in the gutter eating downed fruit and wished to go home. An autumn afternoon saw every apple cut and frozen to stillness, poised for transformation.

With reverence do we complete the circle, only as we see it. With reverence do I share the stories hidden in the flesh, the skin, the germ and bran of all we eat.

This food is for love.