Not for Profit

My husband works for an international non-profit that helps children, youth and aging adults in 22 countries around the world (unbound.org). His work involves a lot of travel, so as a family we're frequently adjusting emotionally to him leaving, being gone, or coming back. Last year I wrote this poem a few days before he left on one of his trips. It is my life-long Valentine to him and to the people he meets while he's gone--the people who give our lives perspective and inspiration and sorrow and profound gratitude.

~ Not for Profit

He is gone
again
gone before he is gone
as my mind readies itself
for the airport goodbye
the quiet drive home
the clock telling me
it is midnight again
one again
two again
Reason says the air
is safer than the ground
but I sleep better
when he is earthbound
again

The children and I find
our own way, even thrive
again
differently
and when we are lucky,
between pajama time
and dream time,
technology opens
a wormhole between
our family room
and a Colombian jungle town
accessible by small aircraft
where he must be indoors
by nightfall, where he sleeps
to the sound of gunfire,
where a man with mirrored
glasses accompanies him
into the slums
again

Or the wormhole opens
to Guatemala where we see
his face, but rain pounding
the tin roof drowns his voice.
His eyes tell about the mudslides,
about the man who, that morning,
pointed to the earth between his feet
where his home had been,
now buried beneath him
with the bodies of his grandson
and daughter-in-law—
how they had heard the rumble growing
freight-train loud, stood
in the doorway of their patchwork
shelter perched on the hillside
not knowing which way to run
from the torrent of mud and boulders

The wormhole doesn’t open
to Haiti
so night after night
I tuck in the little ones
and pretend I am enough

Sometimes the wormhole opens
to Uganda or the Philippines,
Bolivia or India
where he visits a group of mothers
who do not mean to weep
as they tell their stories,
but that is what happens
when the words bear witness 
to their survival
One woman took a loan
for a buffalo, sold milk and yogurt,
bought more buffalo,
employed her husband
to graze them so he could
no longer beat her,
so his mother could
no longer humiliate her
One widow borrowed for saris,
took her needle and thread to them
and sold them for more, soon
had a dozen neighbors embroidering
and sending their children to school

People with nothing find something
 to offer:
a bag stitched from scraps,
a seat in their only chair,
a drink from their only glass,
never dreaming their hospitality
will send him home to us
dangerously ill
He looks into their eyes
asks questions
listens
When he walks out the door,
their disabled child on the filthy mattress
has been considered
touchable, human, worthy
of love and nourishment
The talents and tenacity they bring
to the table have been figured
into the larger equation
of possibility
They have been seen
They have been heard
They have been counted

We make our own micro-loans,
the children and I,
so others can borrow him,
use him to find a path
out of poverty,
and send him back with interest,
adding to him
with their graciousness, their trust,
their hope

He is not gone yet
this time
though my heart has started
its stretching exercises
My worry will not protect him
and, really, I would not want
to protect him
from the consequences
of living fully in this world
So go, sweetheart, go
again
We will all be gone soon enough—
let’s be alive till then