How Do Prepare For The Coming Famine? Poem by RIC BASTASA

i like the way my father and mother
once lived.

they died with all serenity, and there
was this banquet we tendered, before
each passed away, as though
there is nothing to worry

they danced their days, their entrance
of course was silent, and their exits
a little serene, and then we talk as
though we understand how to live
just like them

there were droughts but father knew
how to store water in the house and
each of us had its own fill of our thirts

there were past hungers but mother
has her own skill of using the knife
in cutting each share each piece to
be nibbled by our mouths

and now, we are left here my brothers
and sisters, warned about an incoming famine
let us remember how it was with father and mother
and grandfather's father:

when life was so simple then
when there was hunger and yet none died of hunger
when there was drought and yet each of us has a glassful of water
when there was crisis, yet each had symbiosis