THERE IS NO FOOD
There is no food.
There is no flour nor cornmeal
to make into bread.
There is no coffee
that my mother could boil
for us to drink.
There is no food.
The corn my father planted
in his field
is gone.
We ate it.
There was so little.
The corn pile in the storehouse
was not high enough
to last for long.
It is gone.
Now all of it is gone.
There is no food.
There is food
at the Trading Post
in sacks and in boxes,
in bins and in cans
on the shelf.
There is food at the Trading Post,
but the Trading Post
is far away
and snowdrifts
and snow clouds
are heavy between.
There is food at the Trading Post
but my father has nothing left
of the hard, round money
that he must give
to the Trader
for the food.
There is no food here
in my mother's hogan.
When it is time to eat,
we talk of other things,
but not of hunger.
This thing called hunger
is a pain
that sits inside me.
At first it was little,
but now
it grows bigger
and bigger.
It hurts me
to be hungry.
