Cast Your Bread Upon the Water

Cast Your Bread Upon the Water

(inspired by Ecclesiastes 1 and 11)

by Barb Harwood

In youth I cast, in seed, my bread upon the water, 

impulsively, to sow its devil-may-care,

thinking “this will never end…

I am so smart and invincible!”

The naive investments over time, “opportunities”—

They pile up—manifest as the School of Hard Knocks,

of “What’s it all about?”

of “What a fool!!

of “When did I leave my childhood behind?”

Other children, our own,
come along to coin us responsible,

to blind us too soon that we once, also, were children:

Young.

Vulnerable.

Often afraid—(and a bit mischievous, but only in a good way).

But we became steel-plated adults,

minted of concerns, reputations, gripes, cautions.

     (Our bread was out there, floating).

And then, those children—those whom we forgot we once were—also grow up.

Suddenly, we, who with our children’s leaving and life’s retiring—we, the washed-up and out-of-touch—

find our youth again!

Now, as waiting, silent shadows,

It is we who watch these young-becoming-old people cast their bread in seed

upon their waters.

We note their impatience and find it familiar.

We watch their curveballs, and marvel.

We sense their anguish and gradual resignation

as their idealisms—mere apparitions—dissolve,

leaving only frustrations birthed

in the clear day of reality.

Truly “there is nothing new under the sun!”

Having lost such innocence,

as all do,

they, as we, find it again

in crepe, lackluster eyes that look back at ourselves through the decades;

in shadows and crevasses upon staunch skin.

We find innocence there—

the remains of not having succumbed

to the first, and ongoing sporadic, “days of darkness.”

Welcoming, finally, the bread “after many days,” 

as it laps against the shore after equally many miles,

the message it carries is that youth and beauty— 

vitality and the beginnings of large hopes—

are meaningless;

they never—not really—bring about the intended, 

but only its shade, if even that.

So we pick up the bread that has washed back to

 “Banish anxiety from our hearts and troubles

from our body,”

We-the aged in body but truly old and young in Spirit, 

stand now on the shore of a mature youth.

As the bread meets our palms, 

its life thread ending,

it turns, 

once again,

into seed,

     to be cast upon the water once more.

copyright Barb Harwood

May 8, 2020