– ancient Wampanoag staple food  

Corn, beans and squash are set out before me,
along with the dangled carrot of contentment,
and the sun, harvest smudge, glints through
clean windows to wash this room
in November browns.

And we thank Thee that the cornstalks stretched
to sturdy poles for the beans to climb, that the corn
leaves fanned out to shade the squash
and the beans added nitrogen for them all,
that ten centuries before this little minute

proud, grateful men ate exactly this,
understood the wind, spoke the poems
of deep forest in nightfall, watched
the three sisters hold hands in the clay pot
and dance to an ancestor’s spirit in the flames.