Tracy K. Smith (b.1972)
The Good Life
When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover
Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread,
Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday
Like a woman journeying for water
From a village without a well, then living
One or two nights like everyone else
On roast chicken and red wine.
Tracy K. Smith (b.1972) is an American poet who served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for her science elegy Life on Mars from which this poem comes (Graywolf Press, 2011).
Selected by Amy Frykholm: amy@journeywithjesus.net
