Poem: August 16, 2019

Home Economics

I suppose we always feel poor,
limited as we are, held to a budget,
conscious of every mile driven
and every coffee ordered, hoping
to get one more year out of the grill,
another week before we have to pay
for a birthday gift or hotel stay.

And we know it could be worse.
Of course, we know it could be worse.

The bills get paid mostly on time
and we chip away at the cost of
last year's vacation and the unexpected
surgery/car damage/insurance hike.
We manage to save for the holidays,

and no one starves.

And the old blue carpet and the
hand-me-down chairs, well, they are
what they are- choices made,
de-prioritized, evidence of sacrifice.

The money goes and goes, never
waiting to be counted, never gathering
in stacks, no mountains of coins like
you see in the movies, no need
for a vault or even a safe deposit box.

We are solidly middle class until
those two or three days before the next
paycheck, when the leftovers become
precious and no one's going out and
the change jar lid gets unscrewed and

we wonder, at fifty years old, is this
what we've come to? Is this what
we've accomplished? Is it enough?

For those long hours we are poor, but
don't we always feel poor, knowing
the wheel turns this way every two weeks

until midnight every other Thursday.
Then we live the good life.