The Feast Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

Come eat with me.
I have prepared a feast for you.
Come sit with me
In this grand hall
In front of the great hearth
At the ancient table
Where our ancestors have shared
Food and drink and stories and song
Since before the Christians came.

Come taste the ale.
Let it relax your guard.
Let loosen your tongue.
Let yourself remember the nights
When we sat at this table
Sharing what we had
In times of feast and famine.

Come taste this stew.
Let the aroma bring the past back to life.
Can't you see Mother in the kitchen?
Can't you hear her humming?
Can't you feel her coming up behind you
To load more food on your plate
Telling you to eat, to grow,
Looking at you with those grey-blue eyes?

Come bite into this turkey leg.
Remember Father carving.
Remember his gruffness, his silence,
The love he could not express
But which we felt
In the simple act of being fed.

Taste these bitter greens.
Remember summers spent hoeing, weeding,
Keeping the deer and the rabbits at bay,
So our efforts would yield enough
To feed us through the winter.

I know this food tastes as strange
As it does familiar.
We have both changed.
Much of what we were is lost,
But what we have become,
As much as it divides us,
Is rooted in what we shared
Before we were aware
Of having separate identities.

So eat with me.
Talk with me.
Remember with me.
Forget with me.

And maybe now, as adults,
Living in different worlds
Professing different ideas
We can still be, as we once were,
One family.