POETRY - Future vs. FORTUNE 500

Future versus FORTUNE 500

I am a fertile field

You could plant a seed of most any variety

In the dark, rich soil of my womb

And I would discomfort myself to give safe harbor

At personal risk and expense

Make a clearing within myself amongst my bones

To grow a bigger future

But the FORTUNE 500 is not interested

I am not an oil field buried at God’s insistence deep beyond the ocean floor

For that, the FORTUNE 500 would plan, plot, strategize

Drill most any distance

Face great risk and expense

In their furtive drilling, they will not notice the water, except that it’s in their way,

Put there for them to outwit

They will not marvel at the life

Not pay even a minute’s homage to the very source of their humble, single-celled beginnings

I am not oil

I am a woman.  Earth.  Soil.

I am a female

With a birthright ability to nurture and domicile the future

Like something of a primordial miracle motel, but yes of course

Something more

Just as my ancestors nurtured and domiciled me, my parents, grandparents

In black rich soil of wombs and we were nourished without having to ask

At great personal risk and expense

Though the risks are diminishing, the expense is increasing

Someone, after all, must get paid for delivering miracles

Regardless of the inflationary greed of strange capitalists, I am willing still to meet my birthright

But the FORTUNE 500 is not interested

Because I am not an oilfield, hidden in desperately hostile places

For this, they will negotiate with notorious liars, shake those hands and stretch their dry, taut lips into well-honed businessmen’s smiles

They will hoist heavy machinery with tender loving skill

To feed insatiable will to power appliances and SUVs the world over

But I am not oil

I am an honest American woman

Abundant Earth.  Fertile soil.

I am a woman, this woman

Watching with great interest, yet no matter how hard I try,

I remain puzzled at the academic sincerity of the FORTUNE 500

To quantify a balance sheet line item for intangible value

Yet a question to appraise the fertility of womb meets with blank stares

A most ironic impotence; surely the board of directors values the business of their balls

Here I am, miracle in waiting

And the FORTUNE 500 need not apply

For when they arrive with their enormous manly machinery

It is not to deliver, but to extract

Nothing they touch is ever left intact

Nothing they take is ever brought back

Groping, fattened hands, sausage-like fingers cannot build that which creates miracles

They will bump and grind into the Earth, deep into the womb,

Deplete the awesome, untether the sacred and release it to the profanity of market forces

To create value for shareholders

And if not, no matter, what they cannot create they can fabricate on the statement of income

A sleight of hand, perfected to the point of becoming rote

I am not oil

I am a woman, this woman

Plentiful Earth.  Earnest soil.

In want of perhaps a farmer, an industrious planter

Who finds comfort with this Earth

Who arrives before daybreak with seeds of tomorrow

Rising to ever make good of his hands, to share the risk and expense

His occupation no more construed as a necessary evil than rocking a baby

At harvest, he will collect and he will also replenish to the womb-soil what was fed to the future in the clearing amongst my bones

Whose craftsman’s hands will till blackened, rain-damp soil and not drill through it

As though Earth is in his way

But is itself the coveted prize of bigger future.

9/19/04

Mackenzie Littledale

MaxPixel