Ingenuity may be the mother of invention,
but poverty is definitely the father.

Lewis Zisk¹

Tuco glanced up when the reporter said, "Yet he speaks of weeds
with admiration as well as apprehension, and even with hope."
What a curious sentence! Tuco thought. And he turned back to his letter.

"Some days," he writes, "Ingenuity is a barren mother."
And he paused, pen in air.
What the... he thought as he stared at this cribbed, crumpled line.

Well, he thought, is the mother barren
or is the father?
What is poverty if not barren?
And yet
the line lifts up hope.
"Poverty is the father of invention?"
Nothing else fills that need?

What a feeble idea
under estimating the large scale of imagination
charged by wonder, need and want.

Tuco thinks about breeding horses
and the assistance sometimes needed.
Wonder is such an aid for invention.
A barren lot if no wonder, no aid to the imagination
and that father, poverty.

Desire and imagination are the hidden angels
guiding poverty to its ingenuity. With hope,
faith and regeneration,
the seduction of fertile ingenuity.