My first donation to charity

Dropped a coin into a beggars bowl

Left to survive on another man’s scrap

A man fated to die later that evening

A predicament that had everything to do with the absence of money

And loss of dignity

Poverty, easy to talk about but hard to live with

Poverty, a burden that should not be left in the hands of an individual

With no resources or knowledge to escape it

But in the hands of the systems that led the individual to it

A burden if placed only on the individual

Allows those of us who make it

Believe the individual deserves poverty

And they don’t