Ted LIttleford
When people die far away
When my mother used to say
Children are starving in China
So, honey, finish your lunch
And I imagined a little girl in pigtails
Like the woman who worked at Kowloons
Where we sometimes went in the afternoon
And she sits before an empty open bowl
And even though she’s far far away
I’m somehow to give her half my PB&J
And also some of the Fruit Loops, my special treat
And I don’t even know her
And we’ll really never meet
And this time even the sandwich was very good
No jelly leaking out the white bread like a stain of blood
And where was China anyway
Beyond the park and the school
Beyond the rivers and mountains
So how could half a sandwich ever arrive
Toss it on the ocean, hope for the tides?
All this I recall for my grandson
Who is as I was then picking at his food
Earning his Fruit Loops as he keeps on saying, I died
What does it mean to die? I ask him, in your Mine Craft game
We let him play day and night, but then
There is no school and he can’t see his friends
And if he would finish his lunch inside that would be good
Yes, that would please us is all we can say
It’s still bad here and people are dying in Texas
And Arizona far far away.