Ingredients for Happiness

They say kindness comes from the heart
But hunger pierces a man the most
My mother always said,
So learn to soothe that hunger
those incessant wanting,
those innumerable desires.

Those that sit precariously between the soft folds of our soul
That jagged hunger that only can be satiated
by those deft supple wrinkled hands
coated with the flour and oil
kneading the dough on the warm summer afternoon
soaked by the apricity of the sun.

What is the definition of happiness?
There are many yet none.

A belly stuffed with the desire
to be fed an ambrosial meal by the loved ones
A lingering need that clings to
our soft parts thick as greed
waiting to grow,
wanting to heal.

Those moments pitted with joy,
Those moments pregnant
with the proximity of the loved ones
brimming with passion
soaked with the unending desires
acts like a tourniquet for our bleeding self.

As we gather around the whistling teapot
surrounded by the verdant greens of Gaia
embellished with the soft pockets of clouds
floating carelessly on a warm summer afternoon
suffused with healing and nostalgia in equal measures

Those precious moments
when the air is suffused with the aroma
of warm freshly cooked home meal
douse the desires in your belly
and syncopates with the mellifluous melody
of the long-lost tunes.

What more could a heart want?

Then to be around the kitchen table
a sole witness of our contentment and wanting;
for times unknown,
Where every grain of the wood is ingrained
with the little joys and nostalgia of life
lived to the brim
stripped of its loneliness,
brimming with unmeasurable elation

Of being together as one family
kneaded like a lump of dough
as a dollop of the milky white moon;
waiting to rise
out of warmth,
Together.

First published in Visual Verse Vol 8 Chapter 09, Archived at New Castle Centre for Literary Arts, UK.

Center City, Gaza

Children proffer bowls
Tables teeter on rubble
Someone ladles love

BIO: Nan Meneely has loved working with Haven's Harvest to rescue food. She has published two books with Antrim House. Letter from Italy, 1945 was named by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by 2013 Connecticut writers. Simple Absence, published in 2020, was nominated for the National Book Award.

HUNGER WILL NOT END
​
Hunger can not end,
as long as greed
is respected and admired,
and money is the prize
for depriving others
of their basic lives.

Don't applaud the rich
until they give away
excess millions wealth,
not necessary
for their own needs.

No one should starve
while others have much more
than they can need.

The most effective change,
can only be in hearts
that recognize belonging
to our human family.

Spring, again

Famine in Yemen, gunmen in New Zealand,
catastrophic flooding across the Great Plains.

Spring is a promise, not a guarantee.
The planet shifts on its axis, a wobbling top,

and every day we must learn to stand and walk
again, watching for falling planes overhead,
the first green shoots of crocus underfoot.

This poem first appeared in the anthology We Don’t Break, We Burn: Poems of Resiliency.

Hunger

Tear off the doors of grain silos
so the grain flows unimpeded
from the fertile plains of America
to the remote villages of Africa.

Ship the ripe fruits of the tropics
to the emaciated children in the Middle East.

Quench the parched mouths of young women,
ready to give birth, with fresh, cool waters
from the gushing cascades
in the mountains of Canada.

No one should ever know the debilitating pain
of hunger!
Not when food is rampant throughout the world.

No one should have to watch their bodies shrink
in suffocating heat
while they become victims to starvation.
Not when a banquet of food is spread
in elegant displays in the palatial assemblies
of presidents and prime ministers.

No one needs to stagger on weak legs
as they move miserably
trying to find something to eat.
Not when the affluent nations throw away tons
of uneaten food every day.

No one should ever die of hunger
on this planet abounding with luscious edible foods!

Not one child! Not one mother! Not one grandfather!
Not millions who remain trapped
inside invisible prisons because of the lack of food.
The cells are locked, and the hours press agonizingly
upon the prisoners!

Bring them food!
Liberate them from their prisons!
Show them the compassion of an altruistic fellow human!
​
When one person goes hungry,
we all lose a tiny bit of our strength
and a tiny bit of our dignity
and a tiny bit of our identity
as children of the sacred Lord of Life!