Poet Spotlight: Gary Soto

How Things Work (1985)

Today it's going to cost us twenty dollars
To live. Five for a softball. Four for a book,
A handful of ones for coffee and two sweet rolls,
Bus fare, rosin for your mother's violin.
We're completing our task. The tip I left
For the waitress filters down
Like rain, wetting the new roots of a child
Perhaps, a belligerent cat that won't let go
Of a balled sock until there's chicken to eat.
As far as I can tell, daughter, it works like this:
You buy bread from a grocery, a bag of apples
From a fruit stand, and what coins
Are passed on helps others buy pencils, glue,
Tickets to a movie in which laughter
Is thrown into their faces.
If we buy goldfish, someone tries on a hat.
If we buy crayons, someone walks home with a broom.
A tip. a small purchase here and there,
And things just keep going. I guess.

Wikipedia says:
Gary Soto (born 1952) is an American author and poet. He has received many awards for his writing, which is centered on the Mexican-American experience.
see also: official website

I really liked the piece above, its intricacies, the way the seemingly random and irrelevant things fit together to make sense. The title "How Things Work" has a rather scientific ring to it (not helped by the fact that I used to be addicteed to a educational science PC game with a similar name as a child!!!) and this for me imparts to the poet's portrayal of the little money flows around a community a terrible, machinelike quality. I would like to think that the money flows in the poem are more than just trivial penny-splitting. They seem to me to be metaphors for the interconnections between person and person (perhaps complete strangers) within a community. The 'dominoes' effect of one's trivial spendings spreads out like a rings around the epicentre of an earthquake diagram---but without the drama of an earthquake. The idea of a tip to the waitress '(filtering)' down makes the impact of one action on another seem subtle and consistent, if slow and unoticeable. It also gives the impression of nourishment, suggesting by extension that we are all interdependent within a community and that the way we live---the necessities we buy, small generosities towards ourselves and our loved ones--- may actually sustain or enhance the lives of others and vice versa.