Prayer for a flowering bamboo famine

Recently I came across this poem: Prayer for a flowering Bamboo Famine by Karen An-Hwei Lee. She wrote this poem because she read an article in the newspaper about how every 50 years parts of India have famine because the bamboo trees flower. The supposed reason for this is that the bamboo roots create an explosion in the population of mice who also then raid the harvest and the stores of the farmers. So Karen writes the poem from the perspective of the bamboo tree, who is essentially praying to the gods.

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.