Transparent Words - Poetry

 
SALT
by James Bell


We watched the movie made about Gandhi -
     the bit about making salt struck me
with how such an act could be considered dangerous,
     bring down an empire and unite a nation.

Nothing can be done without salt, though common -
     as much a consituent of life as earth and water
or the sun itself. Empires in the end always
     find they cannot rule light and its magnitude

deprive us of it by locking us away. So, salt they
chose to rule and tax apart from earth and water.

There was the bit too about spinning thread, make your
own cloth to make simple clothes - who knows, when we
     loosen
ourselves from a desire for mere fashion and instead function
     we start to look at life with some simplicity -
     start to taste the salt of life beyond.

 

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