Hardships come each and every day
Struggles always rushing your way
Food on the table, an impossible task
Poverty covered with an uncaring mask
Empty stomach as you go to sleep
Children, hungry, alone, they will weep
Poverty will leave you feeling numb
As you scrape through life to find a crumb
Low wages are all you seem to be worth
As you ponder the reason of your birth
Holding down two jobs just to get by
Poverty does not matter how hard you may try
Sitting in the darkness, for you could not pay your bill
Saps your strength and destroys your will
We are born, and live, then we die
Because you're poor, no one will even care why.

--Judy Eichstedt