Prayer for a Bamboo-Flowering Famine
May we blossom every fifty years
without afflicting the people.
May our seedpods nourish rodents
who roam our groves
without rebuking lands with famine.
May sweet potatoes and rice save us.
May ginger and turmeric flourish
to the bitter distaste of rats
while tresses of bamboo flowers
changeling white wasps
load the groves with seed
in rare perennial synchrony.
May our sisters flower en masse
hundreds of square miles apart