Stretching toward the Rain

Someday when the rains

Come,

We’ll find new food again.

But until then,

We’ll wait

And stretch what quantity remains,

Some

Each day to put upon a plate.

This is a final poem inspired by my time in northern Ghana. Part of the work we're doing there involves identifying poor and vulnerable members of communities, who are most in need of assistance to build durable toilets. In this context, one of the indicators of poverty is that a household is not able to feed itself throughout the entire year. Sometimes, people who fall into this category are referred to as "June/July people", because those months occur around the end of the dry season, when the harvest from the previous rainy season may run out. In this poem, I experimented a bit with very short lines (sometimes with only one syllable). One reason for this is that I think it aligns with the poem's theme of stretching what you have for as long as you can. A second reason is that I think the short lines help to add emphasis. For example, the second line increases the importance of the word "come", suggesting that the narrator is imploring, begging the rain to arrive soon. Similarly, in the seventh line, I think that emphasizing "some" implies a certain cautiousness - the need to be very careful about how much is consumed each day.