Lorna Davis, “Buyer’s Remorse” – 3rd Place Adult Award
Buyer’s Remorse
by Lorna Davis
How long are we allowed to close our eyes
To who produces what our money buys?
How can it be that goods made by a slave
Are justified by how much cash we save?
The cargo ships that crisscross every sea
Are loaded high with human misery,
But products can still be produced in hell
As long as buyers buy what sellers sell.
In Chinese prisons, helpless Falun Gong
(Imprisoned for their faith, they’ve done no wrong)
Are murdered for their lungs or heart or spleen,
New “products” offered on the global scene.
The seller’s crimes become the buyer’s shame;
The buying half must shoulder half the blame.
* * *
Winner of the 3rd Place Adult Award in FoFG’s 2017 Poetry Contest
For Lorna Davis, poetry remains the one constant that began at around 6 years of age and wound its way through life like a tenacious vine. Her own experience of poetry has led her to agree with Robert Frost’s assertion that “to be a poet is a condition, not a profession.”
After retiring, she joined a poetry club at AARP, and began to share her poetry on a wider scale for the first time. One of the poets there referred her to Empirical Magazine, where three of her poems were accepted for publication. In addition to Empirical, and the Best of Empirical 2013 Anthology, her poems have now been published by Rattle’s Poets’ Respond, at the Society of Classical Poets, in SCP’s 2016 and 2017 Journals, and in The Epoch Times. She won 2nd place in the Society of Classical Poets 2017 Annual Poetry Contest. She lives in California.