HUNGERS 
So many kinds--
for touch, relationships, acceptance,
fame, success, or just belonging.
Many stem at first
from thirst
for knowledge,
but none can be
achieved or even begun
when the real hunger
is an empty stomach
at school, at home--
singly or famine by the thousands.
No grain of truth
nourishes bloated stomachs of the starving.
Hunger pangs are not just a saying
to those whose stomachs rumble night and day.
So hard to address
necessary sustenance
despite the plenty—even waste–
in the world’s overall food chain.
One job lost, and home becomes the car or street.
Or perhaps one’s village was bombed or burned
because of differences in cultures or beliefs.
Whatever the cause, the despairing need is the same--
hunger ensues. With no fixed address for help,
each is lost in the cracks
if society lacks safety nets or networks.

​Comment
Mea Culpa

—for Stewart Brand at 80

The bank marquee reads 77 degrees at 6:22 a.m.
Skies are overcast except for slim breaks north and east.
A sparrow or wren walks for a quarter block in front of me,
I think to lead me away from a nest at its personal risk.
So much for humans' corner on altruism, the lack of which
does not quell but propagates hunger across the globe.

Oil-bought politicians be damned for heating the world
—and us for not voting them out of office with cars
run on solar power to underscore the EX in Exxon.
Meanwhile—and the while is ever mean to have-nots--
great swaths of Earth turn deserts, and rivers run dry
as ice caps melt and oceans rise, warm, and acidify.

Why can’t we commit our backs to the political plow
to alter the trajectory of the Clock of the Long Now?

Ed Zahniser has published six books of poetry, including Mall-hopping with the Great I AM and Confidence in Being and other poems (2018). He retired as senior writer and editor with the National Park Service Publications Group. He is poet laureate of Shepherdstown, WV.

Picture of Ed is a "photo posterization by Tom Taylor."

​This Ridiculous Struggle

​The yearning to pin the moth just so,
is the hungry ghost.
The dark of that unquenchable maw.
Monkey mind tells us we're stuck here.
 
Even as I bathe in the orange-y, pinkest sunset on my porch,
those children sit huddled
inside themselves.
Cold or hot, dirty, bored, and of course hungry.
Both occur at the same time.
The sky is a marvelous wash of lingerie hues and mesa burning.
Each wrenched away baby
frenzied by so much absence.

​Julie lives in Freeland, MD and says, “I start, make & point out things. I wonder how we got here. I live on a "farm" and herd kids & pets & groan at hubby's puns, often.”