safety net

I am thinking about safety nets

and their absence: what happens in my tight rope

walk  if I fall, every one depending on me

right now the only one with a job:

I am afraid  to look

down, so I keep taking one step after another

one day at a time, not  thinking

about it anymore than that, 

but history keeps knocking 

 with all the stories I was raised on: 

 daughter of  a Depression survivor

father who always feared the bottom falling out

even with all the benefits of world war II

the  GI bill and an education

even though he was one of the lucky ones

who never lost a job

retired with a pension

so far from where we've come

now, where what he feared most may be

true and he's   holding on 

 to everything that  he worked so hard to make 

so he won't become the 90 year old

who had to find a job as a greet in a grocery store

because he's already lost so much 

all while I am  standing there, swaying

 in the middle of the rope

the worst place to be 

making a budget

 as if I am already living on food

stamps, trying to figure out

how to buy nothing

so we can pay the next installment

of my daughter's college tuition

and dreaming about the benefits of being at the  bottom 

where there is already a safety net:

 jealous of  those benefits 

of a  handicapped friend who lives

in a subsidized housing unit 

on SSI,  jealous of government subsidy programs

and those who get the full cost of their kids 

college costs covered: how crazy is that:

because if I lose my job, lose my pension, 

lose my health insurance, lose my house

how far would I fall?

that's what it comes to, with all this talk

about how much worse things  can get

yet still, I take the swaying steps 

forward, grateful to work.