This post is a poem I wrote for a poetry CREW class around 2006-ish sometime. I haven’t written a ton of poetry, but this is a piece I have always liked.

Riches to Rags

Five months with the old couple had taught me one thing:
No one had ever been so inept
So useless, as I
Fires were lit by servants
Not coaxed grudgingly from bits of paper and flint
Food was brought on trays from warm kitchens
Not grubbed from the dirt with raw and bleeding hands
I had only played at gardening
I knew nothing of rocky soil
Wire-like weeds
Or carts of stinking manure to feed the impoverished Earth
Clothes were always clean
Never having to be mended in candlelight
with dull needles that tormented crude fingers
And there was always plenty to eat
Never did your stomach gnaw at itself
until you would eat sticks
just to feel full
Old Joseph had taught me of the drudgery in life
Old Ana had taught me about beauty in simplicity
And now I scratch and paw at the dry Earth,
Alone,
begging something to grow

© Copyright 2016. All Rights Reserved. https://writingdownthebonesblog.wordpress.com