by Sarah CR Clark, in honor of 7/4/2019

These bright tents call us

to weekly worship

and so, we gather,

            by bike by car by stroller by legs

squeezed in the aisles

            of General Mill’s antique railway

tent poles impartial to our sins

and sing songs first of lettuce

and then scallions.

Our voices lift on the updraft

            between old, white grain elevators

            and the curving, blue Guthrie

                        its modern, living stages

to some Creator who made us and also

the radishes overflowing

            a Hmong family farm’s baskets

the frozen Alaskan salmon nestled

            inside the fisherman’s son’s freezer

the eggs that Farmer Brandon gathered

            and washed yesterday

the tables of jarred, pungent kimchee

            spice-level marked ‘uff dah’ 

and also Nistler Farm’s corn

            which is still growing and absent

            despite the sign

                        (today he sells rhubarb bread)

These stories of dirt and seeds and sunshine

of hands and water and sweat

speak Truth and Life

and so, we listen and hear

holiness grows within these tents.

We come to be fed,

strangers

together discovering

independence

is best celebrated

by claiming dependence

            me on you on them on lettuce on sun on soil on eggs on old on new on blue on them on holiness on you on me

                        and on and on.

Standing on the sidewalk again

the market sends us

into the world

smaller, vulnerable, more complete, and full.