Sunday Brunch at the Old Country Buffet

Madison, Wisconsin, 1996

Here is a genial congregation,

well fed and rosy with health and appetite,

robust children in tow. They have come

and all the generations of them, to be fed,

their old ones too who are eligible now

for a small discount, having lived to a ripe age.

Over the heaped and steaming plates, one by one,

heads bow, eyes close; the blessings are said.

Here there is good will; here peace

on earth, among the leafy greens, among the fruits

of the gardens of America's heartland. Here is abundance,

here is the promised

land of milk and honey, out of which

a flank of the fatted calf, thick still

on its socket and bone, rises like a benediction

over the loaves of bread and the little fishes, belly-up in butter.

Source: Flying Out with the Wounded (New York University Press, 1997)