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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.  Heather Banks, born in Nebraska, has lived in the Boston area, Ohio, Taiwan, Maryland/DC for 40 years, and now in the Shenandoah Valley. Like many retirees, she is so busy with civic groups, writing, art, gardening, and swimming, she wonders how she had time to raise a son and teach or work as an editor.
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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.”
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