Things pretty much worked out for you—
you have what you need, and if you need more,
you have people ready and able to provide.
Sure, someday your luck will run out,
you’ll be helpless, then gone, and your people
will gather in your honor.
There will be music, and tears. People will
embrace—for you. There will be an odd
buoyancy, a chatter of kind words, blessing.
But the curse of this charm is exile
from the unlucky, how gifts make you
deaf to the sudden shout
of a man camped in the ravine,
make you blind to the dirty face
of a woman with a cardboard sign.
Without hunger, it’s easy to be heartless.
Without hurt, you are disabled. Without
the battering of bad luck, the pummeling
of lost hopes, the wounds of life without love,
of dark dreams that last past dawn, how can you
know what one life might do for another?
Kim Stafford
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