✨ ["What do you do for a living?" is a complicated question]

Let’s say I’m a gatherer...

“What do you do for a living?” is a complicated question
since for a living and for money aren’t the same.
Living means a shoreline is better than a bank vault—
all those deposits of driftwood—
and wealth is measured
by the vivid moments in your life.
Money’s just currency,
though it wants to sell you your future.
It has no past, no story explaining the sky,
comparing the stars to a shark bite.
It’s plastic littering the sand dunes;
it isn’t the grass.
Let’s say I’m a gatherer
in the same way clouds are gatherers,
which isn’t a ticket to riches
unless you value rain.

—Rob Carney

From The Book of Sharks, Black Lawrence Press, Copyright © 2018. Used by permission of Rob Carney. Photo by Karsten Winegeart, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.