Enduring Spinning: Agriculture, Culture and War

Enduring Spinning: Agriculture, Culture and War

A Poem by Robert Ronnow

You can feel it spinning
                                   fast
the Chinese, Japanese, American and European junk
orbiting at several thousand miles per hour could
                                                                       punch
a hole in your armor, future. Thanksgiving passes, then Christmas.
A nuclear detonation, we absorb that fact. The scientist in us
delays sadness by recording observations. What is is,
sorrow's for tomorrow.

By reducing probabilities to near zero I hope to avoid sorrow.
In yr suburb.
In history when there were many fewer people we still found reason
to cross space, explore, trade and war. Now
                                                                 overpopulation
may not be the problem but food and water shortages
get our attention.
                          I have Korf's fears.
And hear what I want to hear.

Some hear singing, some hear speeches or complaining.
Martin Luther King sang his complaints, dreamed of a brotherly nation
which came to pass, spinning fast, past Thanksgivings, past jailings
into reconnaissance, small wars, drones, renaissance, inventions.
At the border,
                     where the Juaristas fought Maximilian:
Benito Juarez (1806-1872) Zapotec Amerindian who served five terms as president of Mexico. He was the first Mexican leader who did not have a military background and also the first full-blooded indigenous person to lead a country in the western hemisphere in over 300 years. For resisting French occupation, overthrowing the Empire, and restoring the Republic, Juarez is regarded as Mexico's greatest and most beloved leader.

Each soldier chooses what war at what border, or just
                                                                               shows up
spinning with the planet.
The neighborhood and surrounding nature is orderly.
But always there is implied force, violence holding it together,
                                                                                         chaos
is contained
kept out of the playground, government buildings, children's games
but lies within
the force maintaining order, a spinning tumor, a gyroscope of
                                                                                         inertia.
The force of the spinning, the speed of the force bring one to one's death
seasons, weather, earth.
                                     While the emperor's being beheaded
enduring seeds are discovered and invented, cross-fertilized and bred.
Corn, yams, potatoes, sunflowers, rice.
                                                          Food is life and a good study,
useful discipline
                        daily meditation.
                                                The fighting man protects the farmer
and the farmer feeds the fighting man.
They elect the governor
                                   who serves the people. Peace out.

Peace and war are transitory manifestations of spinning
electrons, planets.
                            The sun's a nuclear detonation, essential
to spring and planting. Food is life. Seeds endure
if man goes to his daily discipline. If woman is man.
Birth and death
                       together are orderly, the border can be known,
voluntarily. How we live together, by prayer or force,
is our story.

Knowledge
from laboratory to starry corridor keeps us very
                                                                     versed.
Did Juaristas consider the rights of animals not to be eaten?
Not during that spinning.
                                     And perform the history that surrounds us.
All that can be done
is written in the spinning:
The people of the land, the Indian farmers of North America �" like their counterparts in Mesoamerica, the Andean region, and the Amazon �" have continuously cultivated maize, beans, squash and other crops for more than five thousand years. One of the salient features of their traditional farming systems is the high degree of biodiversity. These traditional farming systems have emerged over centuries of cultural and biological evolution, and they represent the accumulated experience of indigenous farmers interacting with the environment without access to external inputs, capital or scientific knowledge. In Latin America alone, more than 2.5 million hectares under traditional agriculture in the form of raised fields, polycultures, agroforestry systems and the like document indigenous farmers' successful adaptations to difficult environments.

© 2015 Robert Ronnow


Author's Note

Robert Ronnow
--Wikipedia,  "Benito Juarez"
-- Altieri , Miguel A., Foreword to Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation, by Gary Paul Nabhan, The University of Arizona Press, 1989

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Added on December 25, 2014
Last Updated on January 1, 2015
Tags: Agriculture, Border, Culture, Death, Earth, Endure, Environment, Farmer, Food, Force, Indigenous, Inertia, Knowledge, Mexico, Nature, Nuclear, Peace, Prayer, Scientist, Seeds, Soldier, Spin, War

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Robert Ronnow
Robert Ronnow

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A Poem by Robert Ronnow