David Ray: "Doing Without"

            ’s an interesting

custom, involving such in-

            visible items as the food

that’s not on the table, the clothes

            that are not on the back

the radio whose only music

            is silence. Doing without

is a great protector of reputations

            since all places one cannot go

are fabulous, and only the rare and

            enlightened plowman in his field

or on his mountain does not overrate

            what he does not or cannot have.

Saluting through their windows

            of cathedral glass those restaurants

we must not enter (unless like

            burglars we become subject to

arrest) we greet with our twinkling

            eyes the faces of others who do

without, the lady with the

            fishing pole and the man who looks

amused to have discovered on a walk

            another piece of firewood.

"Doing Without" by David Ray. Text as published in Gathering Firewood: New Poems and Selected (Wesleyan Press, 1974). © David Ray. Reprinted by permission of the poet.

Curator's note: This poem is half of a diptych. Its companion is entitled "Having Too Much," which you can read here.

Art credit: "Old Woman Fishing Alone," photograph by Steve Duffey.