Conscientious Grocery Shopping

It is hard to be so hungry so often.
Not starving, I suppose, not really,
not like those in "third world" countries
where a few fat-bellied men
horde all the aid for their opulent banquets.

But hungry still--an apple
a day--maybe a good friend
(thank god for good friends)
offers some sort of sustenance...
something simple to hold me over for another day.

I'm bored with hunger, of dreaming
of grocery shopping
like I used to dream of
flying, or falling. Something
exciting anyway.

But still, as crazy hungry as I may be, I think about
swollen-bellied children with flies
melted to blank faces.
(why don't they ever swat them away?)
Of bodies so thin that the skin hangs from brittle bones.

That old saying, when you didn't
finish your food at supper:
"Think of the children in..."
I thought, I think, about that untouchable idea,
of other countries, other starving people,

But I still could not finish the food.
There simply wasn't any more room,
(I wish, I wish) What luck, what good fortune...
Someone told me that if I was dirt poor,
I must be doing something right.

Here, in this strange land of big appetites and bigger egos,
maybe that's true. Maybe we're so garish that
a spell of serious poverty merely builds character--
they'd never dream of it, not in the dry, dusty places--
To have that kind of luxary, I should feel so blessed, I guess.

-erm 9.25.02

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