Luggage

(for one leaving) 

You are required to keep the poundage low: 
two large cases and a carry-on: 
what you take for months overseas. 
In a year of famine, you have volunteered 
for hunger in a strange language 
you begin to force onto your tongue, 
words affirming ways of irrigation: 
seeds salvaged, sprouts toward green 
in the fields. 

                                    What you need most was there 
before you packed, not fire in the eyes, 
but deeper, not things you have 
but what you enjoy. 
You’ve planted vegetables and flowers 
in old tires — a family’s garden; 
pruned massive lilac trees and honeysuckle 
that crowded paths; painted fences 
and repaired collapsing sheds 
in that dying farm town. 

                                                                        When I walk back 
toward my car and education, the acquiring 
of whatever will allay my dread of poverty, 
I carry nothing from the airport 
but an ache and tremble in my hands.