Fairness Poem

Sometimes my body feels like a rattrap. 

I can feel some small animal, hardly a morsel, sickly and slowing down inside my skeleton. 

Every day for a year and a half straight I pondered

the meaning

of every inconvenience.

Was a flat tire a sign that I shouldn’t leave the house?  I walked everywhere. 

I was always seeing something I thought I should write down –

a violent protest to end the war, a cop throwing his cigarette butt

on the lush green grass of a public park.  Eventually,

I tried to help homeless men and women and even children

decipher a meaning to life. I approached it like a math problem:

this one person has to suffer enough to cover a sadness deficit

so some other guy and his girl can live in a decent apartment

and both own cars.

You shouldn’t describe the meaning of life to a sick person

unless you are also sick. 

My body is a rattrap but I feel okay, all in all. 

I feel better when there’s so much noise I can’t hear that last disappointed moment.

I’m grateful for friends and for my health.