Wealth

Wealth

An old lady slowly makes her way around the perimeter of the parking lot sorting litter and salvaging the treasure of aluminum cans. She puts them in a large plastic trash bag and moves on up the street to the lot next door. I am a poet and I have little money–less, in fact than the great majority of people of my age and education and experience dwelling in the boom economy of the United States today. I really don’t like money. It certainly hasn’t helped anyone I’ve ever known or heard of regarding important matters of happiness and spirituality. But, then, my poverty is a self-inflicted blessing, and well protected from desperate need by the safety net of loved ones who would hardly allow me to go hungry or be without shelter. When I have money I give it to my wife and move on. When I need money, paying jobs, benevolent benefactors, or outright gifts seem to appear. In other days, I have known times of sparse resource and little promise. Times when warmth came from twigs foraged from the forest floor and cash came from diverse day jobs consuming precious poetic hours that I might buy bread and cold cuts and just break even. But, I didn’t mind. A dozen years ago I quit a thirty-thousand-dollar-a-year job to enjoy such austere liberation. And of late, I had to let the poetry go fallow for nine of the past twelve months and work as a builder. I’m stronger and leaner and not quite out of hundreds yet. Almost, but not quite. I still can afford to eat high-cholesterol breakfasts at Mexican restaurants, then spend hours writing in coffee houses where everything costs two dollars. I know nothing of the experience of the broken down old lady with the Hefty bag ever so slowly filling with aluminum cans.

With the change and loose bills in the pocket of my jeans I could give this maven of the dumpsters more money than she’ll make in a week of scavenging. But I can’t.

There are many layers coexistent within Earth’s illusion of a three-dimensional reality. I can see her labored step, her tattered clothing. I can see the filth of trash and rubble and weeds through which she walks. I could step outside and feel the same sun that bakes upon her bent back, but, even so, there is no connection between the world of my pocket and the world of her purse. We dwell in different realms and between us there is a border I dare not breach. Poverty, pride, penitence–who could know what forces come to bear upon this summer’s morning of the old lady: Karma? Bad luck? Bad living? Who can say bad? Bag lady or Bodhisattva? I’ll never know.

I cannot give her my wealth, but, with silent will, I bless her.

June 14, 2000