Meditations of Bodhisattva Bacon

A week at Polyface Farms in Virginia with the legendary Joel Salatin: advocate, writer, teacher and Pasture Farmer and local food champion.

You label me pork, but I am a Pig I must say,

and expressing my Pigness is my Dharmic way,

to run and play,

to nap under shady trees on hot summer days,

sniffing and sniffing the wind’s tasty delight,

I follow my curiosity day and night,

Rolling in the mud hole,

is my euphoric bath of skin and soul,

Proving my might,

I fight and bite,

with my spear of a snout I poke and poke the earthly ground,

savoring all the spoils that are found,

Scratching my nagging itch on the bark of a tree,

is my captive Pigness liberty,

I may not be free,

But my Pigness is free to be me,

Unlike my cousin’s fate,

entombed in a casket of a crate,

drowning in misery and shit,

all for a discounted shopper’s club gift,

with an itch that can never be scratched,

her torturous life can’t be matched,

I don’t know why,

we must die,

death feeds life —

life feeds death,

the bitter-sweet marriage of being,

is our perpetual way of seeing.

I don’t know the way,

remember I shit in hay,

a good life and okay end?

or my cousin’s hellish nightmare and death by the sword?

some say — no life and no death for us all,

but that would kill delicious clover and acorns in the fall,

for your knife chooses my end,

yet its a sword that battles for my beginning,

so if you must use your knife,

will you grant me my Pigness life?

for you choose my fate,

with every bite you put on your plate.

So with fork and knife,

heart-mind and life,

continue the zombie herd eating blind,

Or Awaken the bodhisattva lion.