Wherewithal

Once, we dreamed of walking 
the famed Camino, pilgrimage 
covering months and miles through 
parts of Portugal, France, and Spain; 
ending at the field of the star where 
the saint is buried. It could even 
have been the honeymoon we never 
had, since after we married, a winter storm 
bore down on Chicago and we wound up 
spending the long weekend with our guests 
in a time-share rental whose dining table 
was still strewn with crumbs of lemon
poppyseed cake and edible flowers.
But we are no longer young, having spent 
so much of our lives working for the where-
withal that gave us this mortgaged roof 
(shingles rattling above our heads in high 
wind), that made it possible to put children 
through school and pay various doctors 
for our ailments. How curious, this word
which means with or by means of which 
a thing or outcome might be procured,
typically by financial means—a compound
of adverb and preposition followed by
a suffix indicating condition or state.
The Milky Way, in legends of the Camino,
was made of the dust raised by pilgrims'
feet. So many souls walking the paths
marked by shrines and scallop shells
in search of penance or of miracle, 
the exhausting labor of each step 
a ransom for their requests.