hunger in the tailings

OLD BUTTE RAT                                    





I will not end up like the beggar
with the sign that reads "Need Food," even though,
of course, honesty may be everything.


I think that a philosopher should have something to talk about,
a writer something to write about.  I have never been able to
do more than declare I was a chip on the foamy river,
and on the chip.  "Hey, I say, "I'm still afloat."


Rumi wrote, "Beyond ideas of wrong doing,
beyond ideas of right doing,
there is a field.  I'll meet you there."


I wonder who might bring bread?  That's what I wonder.
Why a field?  I'll meet you in the alley
I say.  Of course, I am from Butte,
not Silky Persia or Smooth Move America.


Still.  It is the Indian Paint Brush flowers
and Bear Grass that get to me, as I fork through the sausage
of current affairs, remembering the sacred little mining
operations of the past.


It is also the sky without contrail.
To gaze at the heavens now is to peer through
a shattered windshield,
cracked up by lawless noisy aircraft.


Occasionally, I catch a glimpse of blue...





--Ed Lahey




















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