terrypetersen

“It is important for people to realize that we can make progress against world hunger, that world hunger is not hopeless. The worst enemy is apathy.” – Reverend David Beckmann, president of Alliance to End Hunger.

My Name Is World Hunger

My name is world hunger.

I am both well-known and ignored.

I appear anywhere around the globe

where war has assaulted and destroyed

dignity and peace. I live where

there is too much or too little water.

I flourish where greed sings

every important song and

silences smaller voices.

I was created, not born.

Like disease, I am not normal.

Yet, I long to be healed,

to be in tune with the whole,

rounded into softness,

not rounded inside the bellies

of my victims.

My name is world hunger.

I did not choose existence.

May I slip inside history,

remembered as a shameful plague,

corrected and shaped

inside a power known as peace.

I am willing, so willing

to belong to the past,

gone, but never forgotten.

published in For A Better World 2023