Rationing

Rationing

We rationed the hope the same way we rationed the flour,
small amounts spread carefully across every hour.
Too much hope burns through faster than the food,
too little and the body goes into a different mood.

Rationing is the practice of extending what you have,
rationing is the discipline of the longer path.
Rationing is not deprivation if you do it right,
rationing is the strategy of surviving through the night.

We held our ration meetings at the beginning of each week,
five of us around the counting, five of us to speak
the truth of what remained against the days remaining,
the truth of what was possible without complaining.

Someone always pushed for more than could be given,
which is the human thing, which is the driven
hunger talking past the rational, and someone always held
the line of what was possible with what was left and spelled
it out with patience, which is the community’s survival art,
the balance of the hungry body and the thinking heart.

By the time the aid arrived we’d made it to the week,
by the time the aid arrived we’d found the strategy unique
to our specific group of five with our specific need,
and the rationing had worked, and we had learned to heed.

I ration still, two years past the crisis and the end,
I ration out of habit and I find I don’t intend to mend
the habit, find the discipline of enough has value
in the ordinary life of plenty as a residue.