Quaker Oats
by Rita Dove
The grain elevators have stood empty for years. They used to
feed an entire nation of children. Hunched in red leatherette
breakfast-nooks, fingers dreaming, children let their spoons
clack on the white sides of their bowls. They stare at the carton
on the table, a miniature silo with a kindly face smiling under a
stiff black hat.
They eats their oats with milk and butter and sugar. They eat
their oats in their sleep, where horsedrawn carts jolt among miry
roads, passed cabins where other children wait, half-frozen under
tattered counterpanes. The man with the black hat, a burlap sack
tucked under his arm, steps down from the wagon whispering
come out, don’t be afraid.
And they come, the sick and the healthy; the red, the brown, the
white; the ruddy and the sallow; the curly and the lank. They
tumble from rafters and crawl out of trundles. He gives them to
eat. He gives them prayers and a good start in the morning. He
gives them free enterprise; he gives them the flag and PA systems
and roller skates and citizenship. He gives them a tawny canoe to
portage overland, through the woods, through the midwestern
snow.
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