I am thinking of the sacrament of eating: how
this celery, for instance, pale straight stalk,
yellow unsunned heart, will become me
and of how little we know of how our lives are built
on transformation, crisp green leaf
to pulsing skin and hard white bone
how one thing can spend all its seasons
becoming itself, and then, suddenly, becomes
another, far from any sprout in an April field.
A member of the Poetry Caravan, M. Doretta Cornell has given workshops at Hudson Valley Writers’ Center and in The Brenda Connor-Bey Learning to See Legacy Workshop Series. She taught at Pace University. Her poems have appeared in The Westchester Review, Red River Review, Earth’s Daughters, Inkwell, Third Wednesday, and Commonweal, among other journals, and in the anthologies (en)compass (Poetry Caravan) and McGraw-Hill’s Literature 5th and 6th Editions. Ms. Cornell also writes on social justice and environmental issues.