Not Too Much To Ask

We haven’t had a good crop in three years,

not since the bounty of ’31,

and we’re all whittled down to the bone these days,

even Ma, with her new round belly,

but still

when the committee came asking,

Ma donated:

three jars of apple sauce

and

some cured pork,

and a
feed-sack nightie she’d sewn for our coming baby.

February 1934