Olive

A Protest Poem by Rick Benjamin

Fruit fractal,

        seed & roots,

                 oil pressed

into the past

        imperfect,  8

                 million trees

a decade ago

        cultivated, occupied

                 land, liberated

crop.  Olive groves

        in evidence 4 

                 thousand years

before Jesus tried

        to heal the human

                 once & for all.

The call to prayer

        can wake up a whole

                 city, can call you to

wake up any time of day:

        it’s harvest time, there’s

                 fruit to pick. The air heavy

& rich with oil. Until, at 

        last there isn’t any, no trees

                 or people that haven’t been

bulldozed or bombarded to death.

        The Palestinians, they are olive

                 people, just as the Salish are salmon.

Every olive leaf

        is a skeleton; every

                 human life carries a trace

of evidence, of kinship with

        the more-than-human world,

                 & that tree will, again, bear fruit.

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Rick Benjamin (he/him) lives on unceded Chumash land in Goleta, California. He currently teaches classes and facilitates workshops to students aged five to, currently, 101. 

Photo by Ash Hayes