For today’s poetry prompt – #poemadayfeb (pillow), I thought about my life, and the lives of other’s some more fortunate than me, others, less so … I have always had a comfy pillow, and as much bedding as I need to keep warm through the night. Others may not even have a room to sleep in, let alone a pillow.
The world can be such a cruel place for some people, while other, more fortunate and privileged people have everything they could ever want or need. It isn’t ‘fair’, the way these things are allocated, but it’s what we have, this life. All we can do, if we are not at the top, is to find the best way to live our lives.
As I indicate in the poem, I am one of the fortunate people in the middle, having enough of everything I need, and quite a bit of what I want too. I have a home, electricity, food, water, enough money to run a car, with more money to attend events I wish to attend. I am grateful for this, and certainly realise my lot in life is a fortunate one indeed.
Is it luck that dictates of life’s position? I was lucky enough to have been born to a comfortably situated middle-class family, hard-working parents, working to give their children all they could. I gained my education, then easily got a job, and went on to get married, have a child, and could leave work, with a good life-style …
Now, my son has left home, and I can continue living a fine life, getting all I want and need, not splashing cash around, but definitely comfortably well off. I realise I am lucky. Earlier today, at a poetry event, we were talking about people who are definitely not well off. They are the poor people, destitute, poverty-stricken.
These people live in the same towns as us, but live their lives differently, in the same places and at the same times, sometimes, but in different ways. I pay for my flat white coffee, the poor person receives their drink for free, both of us have free water available to us at the same hotel, that we both visit from time to time.
I drive my car to get there, my home being many miles away, they walk, their own home being somewhere within walking distance, always, because walking is their only option. I paid my taxes, when I was a worker, my husband did too, we both pay GST for what we buy … Society is there to make sure all can get enough to survive, or it should be. Life is a weird gamble, and I got lucky …
Life’s a Gamble
I wake up every morning –
with pillow, sheets, blanket.
I bathe, dress, breakfast
& coffee available to make …
I think on others, who
after a rude awakening,
scramble out from their
uncertain resting place –
No food for them, not until
the charity workers arrive
and they can search out
their allotted rations.
Do any of us deserve
what life has, or hasn’t
given us? Is it a gamble
some win, others lose?
Privileged few, with much,
many more with some,
the sorry few with little –
that’s life’s cruel lottery …
Carolyn Cordon - Creative 