Poem by Linda Dove

Property Rights
 
We watch them on the news after supper,
the families made destitute by guns and fire,
whole villages fleeing torture and rape.
 
We observe them in health centers
as they cradle infants turned to bone,
as adult bodies wither, sag and stumble.
 
George Orwell down and out got it partly right.
He wrote, It is fatal to look hungry.
It makes people want to kick you.ᴵ
 
Kicking is fear expressed in hate and blame,
in the sense there’s not enough.
that our bellies too could flap like theirs,
hanker every hour for crusts.
 
Our greatest fear is lest we forget
to forget that we too are mortal,
that one day, sooner, later,
we too wither, stumble, die.
 
We prefer not to know that the luxuries
of our living—our money, homes and treasures--
are but arbitrary gifts of grace.
We do not own our bodies, let alone our stuff.
 
Accepting fully that I will die liberates me
from the urge to kick. But the next step
is the hardest: to feel free to share my supper
with the hungry, as though it were my last.
 
Linda Ankrah Dove
July 25, 2018
 
i George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933

Linda Ankrah-Dove’s career in development in the poorest countries of Africa and Asia inspires many of her poems. Her first book, "Borrowed Glint of Jade", was just published!