Writer's Crcle Prompt: Rarity Hunger // Climbing tree

 

Prompt RARITY: Hunger

When I started writing to the prompt of rarity, I tried to think of something rare and beautiful like a gem, a flower, or a butterfly.  And, indeed, I did think of them: jade, edelweiss, and little white butterflies.  I also tried to come up with short funny stories—pretty rare with me.  But my mind kept coming back to Gaza and food and water scarcity, whereas what’s rare with me is hunger:

I pledged to fast on World Hunger Day, May 28^th,
But was weak-willed on the follow through. 
I had sandwich meat and lettuce in the fridge,
and cookies in my kitchen cabinet. 
 
If those who hunger had the same backup,
we wouldn’t be talking about genocide.
War and climate emergencies have left shelves
truly empty.  Store shelves are empty, too.
 
People are rioting for food at the few
UN stations that are open in Gaza.
The news isn’t broadcasting what’s happening
in Sudan, so it could be even worse there.
 
And I cannot even make it through a one day
fast without eating what’s on my shelves.
I would not survive the food famines of
our times.   Here the market is open.
 
What is rare in Gaza is a loaf of
bread and a bottle of wine—or water.
What is rare with me is hunger. 

 Of course, I am using the words incorrectly.  Rare or rarity refers to something precious and more so because there is little of it, whereas scarce and scarcity refers to something generally abundant but not here and now.  So is hunger rare or scarce with me?  And is food rare or scarce in Gaza?

Prompt: RarityClimbing tree

We had a perfect pine tree to grow up with.  It was a long-needled pine located on the top of wooded hill.  Alongside it ran a low stone wall made from the shale and rock of the hill and field that must have lived behind it at one time.  The pines there seemed young next to our perfect pine tree, since they were all easy to reach around with a child’s arms.  Our white pine could only be reached around with two children’s arms open wide.  Its lower branches touched the ground and the wall.  It was our climbing tree.  Three children often sat in the lower branches, swinging our legs and watching our mother or grandmother sketch.  I would climb to the second level, but my bother climbed up to the height where branches were too close together to navigate. For me, the long-needled pine was also a story tree.  The carpet of orange pine needles, especially where it touched the stone wall, seemed the perfect place for fairies and elves to have their homes.  The dog Mitzi, who ran up the hill alongside us, sniffed at the tiny doorways like a hungry monster looking for prey.  The occasional chipmunk who ran along the wall didn’t alter my stories.  After all, in the tree I was the height of a giant myself, and nothing could reach me.  

Arcadia in the Catskills
by Susan L. Chast
 
Neither sheep nor shepherds populate the canvasses
of the Hudson River School of painters and Mother
concurs in her renderings of river banks where spring-
flowering apple and cherry orchards turn to small fruit
by the 4^th of July when the corn is knee high and heat
tricks maple leaves into early oranges among pine-needled
forests where grew the climbing tree.  
 
She drew the long-limbed pine while I watched chipmunks
and fairies run and hide from me in reindeer-mossed
hobbit homes under the brown-skinned roots
of the ancient tree surrounded with rattlesnake-filled
stone walls where cows once grazed in the old days. 
I climbed quietly to a still low limb to scout until pine  
tickled my nose into a sneeze.
 
Later I dreamed untamed forests full of elves, lost
ghosts knocking on our walls and windows, and magic
so loud I couldn’t sleep and indeed the morning footprints
dotted across the driveway could have been their horses
and not the deer trespassing to chew lettuce
with the rabbits, little Peter Cotton tail in the lead
as they ran before the morning sun
 
I leaned my rake against the fence, clothes pinned
the towels on the line until they swept the ground,
and scolded the crows and red-winged blackbirds,
robins, and starlings and swifts  not to eat
the mulberries over the fresh wash and to leave
some on the tree for me to eat with milk before
I visited the climbing tree.
 
Was it gone?  Did it Brigadoon away when the night 
moon played tricks on pathways and tree limbs?
 One more rise, to climb and then another—
I knew it was closer yesterday but not as close as when
my older brother or mom came along to play or when
the faeries slipped a dime under my pillow
in exchange for a tooth.
 
Where did the faeries put the teeth?  I scuffed
the thick mat of rusty needles to find them,
reached into nooks and climbed higher to see
if they used my teeth up in the tree –and I knew
mom laughed at me, but she also told me stories
when my grandfather’s geese chased her,  bit her
heels and chased her home
 
That is when Rip Van Winkle started bowling
the skies turned angry with fat cheeks blowing
hard to shake us from the limbs--and this time
everyone ran: elves and faeries, mom and brother
and me, deer, rabbit, horses, ghosts, leaves and rattle
snakes just like the cards in Alice’s trial leaping
and falling for shelter and towels and naps
and dreams.
 

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

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