Trade--Inspired By Richard Wlodarski's Captain Bad News Poem by M.J. Lemon

welcome to the border between
life and what comes then
a one-way journey made after choices
thought, deliberation, banter
nudged in the direction of the trade
that cost twenty years' breath after a month
of agony from the dust inhaled

Sitting still in the soil of ancestors
promised life for many years yet
taking freedom free will and opportunity
in the form of tax, tariff
giving poverty, pain, and insecurity

a few decades traded for a life
giving soil for the dust