Prayer for a Bamboo-Flowering Famine

Every half century, the synchronous flowering of bamboo causes famine in parts of India. 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 in the pale night. May our shoots pray a silent vision of healing, our rhizome-laden memories: Yes, we share our hunger only once on this earth, my love. Let us bless our fruit and multiply.