Hungry for an Answer

HUNTING FOR AN ANSWER

If you’re tracking the ol’ one-

and- done, the catch-a-falling-star-

and-put-it-in-your-pocket, the snap-

it-in-a-locket-and-never-let-it-go, 

you’ll be glad to know you’re not alone. 

You’ll be even more relieved 

with the present company 

when you look around and see 

a whole troop of us trudging back to camp, 

loaded down with a respectable haul

of queries but not a single quarry

in our nets, and you yourself

with nothing definitive to offer,

at least not with any meat on it . 

Despite the rhetoric raining down

from the the mouths of the Big Chiefs

about ............

there’s a small contingent of us— feel free

to join, though we’re not the most

popular bunch—growing ever more

enamored with the alternate

approach of our gathering 

ancestors, those meek kneelers

groveling in the dirt and waiting

for their needed sustenance 

to be delivered into their open

hands on its own, slow time. 

It meant admitting they were too slow 

to catch it, and further, that soon enough 

they'd come crawling back—again 

and again and again, down

the generations—for more.