Answer To An Offer For Help

So many grains of rice slipping off of the plate.
Trying to tidy up now. Feeling pretty slovenly.

Back a few weeks/months/years ago
friends offered to help me get home for Imani.

At the time, I was scrambling.
Imani out of school meant pounds flying
out of the never enough - into the greater need.

Well - I've landed not one but two teaching positions.
University Of East London and City Lit.

Since getting the jobs, Norman and I have been in a mad
scramble to try to make it work for Winston.

The past two weeks have flattened me. My only bit
of pavement unfolds beneath my feet when I realise
we will eventually have extra cash

to send home for Imani.
Winston suffers daily from the transition.

But, the minder is a good woman with kids,
so he can be mostly happy. The ends here

keep getting clipped by fate and circumstance.
Never enough, bankrupted from the summer of fun
turned nightmare stroke. And fallout.

Between frugality, waste and friendship there is
knowing. As unsettled and worse

longing echoes from the hills. Ravens keep
crossing my path. My hatred of them wills flight.