Beans and Tea

We got good at arithmetic
Writing down figures each week
On notepads taken from hotels
Where we’d stayed in better times
Some adding, mostly subtracting
Blackboard equations and formulae
Trying to engineer another week
Our fingers sifting for rocks and hulls


Sitting down to our brown beans and tea
Thinking of the people Grandpa talked about
when he spoke of the Thirties
About people who lived in caves out in the hills


Shopping became simple
We walked past all the bright packages
and only bought in bulk
All we cared about was
Having our beans and tea
and reading our library books