Monday, November 22, 2010

A Note to My Politicians

Hear me now:
Your pursuit for safety is as false as your concern for our health.
While you shake hands and lie in bed with chemical producers
and drug distributors
you cry out in the name of food safety,
to pasteurize, bleach, boil, package and inject
everything which passes our lips.
You can't serve it raw
because it is too dirty and dead.
You have never worked in real soil.
You have never washed earth off your food before preparing it.
You have never shaken sleepy bees from dewy blooms early in the day.
You are afraid of people who eat from their garden,
because their minds
are still their own.
Subsidize.
Pasteurize.
Sanitize.
Kill the small farmer.
Then sell us drugs
and flu shots.
Give us antidepressants.
Tell us to wear sunscreen and never go out into the sun.
Eat from a bag
or box
that's sealed and clean.

No I won't vote for this.
I have cast a different ballot,
and it is waiting at the end of my fork,
seared rare,
and dripping with unpasteurized cream sauce.
My hens will continue to lay warm eggs right into my fry pan
without your permission first.
I will give what little is left of the diminishing American dollar to my neighbor
in exchange for pastured pork
and raw milk.
I will spend time collecting seeds.
I will use butter liberally.
I will go out in the morning to harvest.
I will not drink your corn syrup.
I do not want your sterilized meat.
I don't want your drive-thrus and chains.
In the name of all that is patriotic,
I will drink milk straight from the happy cow.
Keep your red #40,
your food safety modernization act,
your myths.
Smoke your cigars and drink your scotch.
Sign your papers.
Legislate.
Your "safe" food
is a life lived behind bars.
If this is safety
keep it.
What you need
is some real food
my dear,
fear ridden
politician.
What you need
you will find
in raw milk cheddar
melted over homemade sourdough.
What you need
waits at the bottom
of a tall glass
brimming with handcrafted beer.
You will find peace
in slow roasted root vegetables,
dipping your crisp
thick-cut
pastured bacon
into your poached fresh egg.
Slurp a raw oyster
fresh from the sea.
Pass the butter.
Smell the herbs.
Drizzle the honey.
Break the bread.
I welcome you
to my renegade table,
my hungry politician.
But be prepared
to become
blinded
by the light.

12 comments:

  1. Touche Rachel... well stated!

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  2. Jim says... raise hell rachel!

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  3. get it girl! there is such educated power behind your words. i am amazed as always and so proud to have you in my life.
    you. are. brilliant!

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  4. right on Rach! I'm going to read this to my class tomorrow- they are fired up too!

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  5. With your permission I copy it and pass it on to whom it wants,
    Eduard.

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  6. Copy and paste my friends! It's yours for the taking! Thank you for the great comments!

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  7. Wow- I think that was a poem, a testimony and a manifesto all at the same time. I really really like that. May my mind always be my own! I think I am not surprised that you are having primal dreams with these sorts of words flowing from the depths of your poetic psyche. Get it.

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  8. This is most wonderful,inspiring ,spoken truth I have had the honor of reading in years. Be proud that you can tell it like it is. And you have a heart filled with understanding of the truth.
    Sincerely Shirley

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  9. Oh Rachel, I love this. This is what Freedom is, and what our country was founded upon...what our ancestors practiced! I will copy and paste and credit you of course.

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  10. Wonderful! Just in these past few months I've seen how much of a blind eye I had to all the foods I had been using. I will copy and credit you.

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