In Debt and in Surfeit

In Debt and in Surfeit

How troubled are our lives—and needlessly!
Our tribulations are engendered by
our own entrapment in the webs we weave.

How meager are the needs that must be met
so we may live, with freedom from distress.
The air we breathe is free—and so should be
the water that we drink.  We each can feast
a fortnight, just on rations carried on our backs.
We also need, in climates of extremes,
some shelter from the elements—and none
of us can live for long in icy cold,
without the clothes and heat that we require.
No primates ventured near the frozen realms,
except the ones who stitched and tended fires.

But that is all we really need—except
ourselves and those that give us company.
And in this last necessity, we find
a richness and a solace that had served
us well, providing culture, memory
that passed through generations—woven strands
that still endure—although we now retreat
to hermit cells, preferring to subsist
on those connections more in our control,
so keeping humans off at distances,
while drowning still in debt and in surfeit.

Till yesterday, we lived as foragers,
content and fully human—that, which we
are now no more, except in vestiges.

2017 May 5th, Fri, 6:10 pm
Milestone Park, Bensonhurst
Brooklyn, New York