tight

When I say things are tight right now and you say "I hear ya!" I don't think you quite understand. Tight is not "on a budget" or even trying to grow your own food. Tight is not cutting back on eating out or saving less than normal. It's not buying one pair of boots instead of three.

Tight is leaving a grocery store in tears because you don't have enough money to pay for groceries and have to eat from the dwindling pantry for another week and a half.

Things are tight. You're comfortable.

someday far

one boy never home
in the time mother's door
gave away every mountain
in the last well garden
and dead things' bones
taught fallen boys to sing
to the sea-wind woman
sing with the blood bairn

we've seen winter men
lay broken words down
with hands born in water

God found every mountain
and named the snow river
whose water gave singing
and the words carried time
to face birds in the morning