M is for Monsanto, M is for Malicious and Malevolent

Bruno, Saskatchewan:
A town where farmers make their peace with nature

Percy Schmeiser planted here,
using the purest spirits as guidance
to plant his seeds and breath
the soil that gives us all commonality and stability.

Here his seeds grew,
stretched in the sweat from decades of dirt and plight,
resting with the strength of stars that
calmed them in the daunting night.

For decades they whistled at him until
the silent slit of night;
it let him know
they appreciated all he'd done,
and if that wasn't enough
to make him smile the whole way home,
they'd bow to him as his shadow
disappeared under the bending red horizons
then posing for him
in the pictures frames of grated kitchen windows
so he could watch them play til' dawn.


There was something magical about this yellow haven:
The camaraderie.
The commitment.
The circadian calms,
almost as golden as a Mayan throne.
The reflection like lightening in the sky;
it was connections to magnetic lines,
the spinning molten core of the earth
that encapsulated the smell of canola
in Silos packed with years of seed and sweat.

It was the drifting of Dakota winds,
chased by the soft songs of Canadian heart
that sprouted plants dripping with virgin oils bubbling in the sun,

But they no longer rest in the palm of nature,
or sing organic songs to his children,
now hiding under front porch swings;
they no longer grow with the freedom of the clouds
and the envy of the trees.

No.

Now they've been exorcised from the purity the earth,
mutated in the arms of Monsanto and
strung out on the lines of poles mounted by dollar signs.

It's sad,
to hear the tears Percy and his family cry;

He's lost:
The strings nature of he once touched to feel others parts of the universe,
the fields he planted,
the years,
the pounds of ground cartilage,
the gallons of sweat,
the wagons wheels spinning of happiness,
Hope;
He's lost it all.

He's being fought off
with a war of corporate greed.
And soon,
just like Percy,
everyone's back yard is going to begin to die,
begin to feel the whiplash
and the sniffle
from corporations who think they cut up
and own parts of nature,
uprooting all that is pure.

It's beyond homeless hope and strangled hearts;
And sadly, it's a war that has almost been won.


-Nathaniel T. Hughes, March 2007