Contrasting Worlds

Relatives hanging out of every orifice, window, ledge, and lawn chair Hands out, the two starving children beg as people walk by, ignoring them. In Great-grandma McCormick’s teeny tiny farm house, during family reunion. No more bowls of rice, no more bread, there is nothing left. Hunger sets. Laughter wafts from the barn, behind the shed, and especially the kitchen. Their mother hung on as long as she could, but she died of flu yesterday. Too many women are in there, some wearing aprons, all of them in the way. Those who took their mother’s body away left her two small children, knowing. The men are hiding out in the pasture, barn, beside tractors, sharing stories. They had their own unfed waifs, they could not worry about these two. Sixteen kinds of pies and two cakes are trying to find a place on a shelf. It is expected they will die soon. They probably will be gone by morning. Beef, pork, chicken and fish that prances in would feed three or four armies. Two urchins are resilient and refuse to die easily; they are alive the next day.