In a mud walled room with no furniture
I am still sleeping in a blue hammock
the color of earth.. a two year old comes
to wake me, shakes me, saying, “Quero pao”

I grunt, rise, walk up red laterite hill
with his tiny hand in mine, buy four loaves
of bread still warm from the oven, for him,
his seven brothers, sisters, his mother

I’m twenty and it’s a summer’s escape
from the colder north where I belong and
not for thirty years do I recognize
Luciano’s my father who first knew

Himself starving in wartime - the rapture
Of his hand in mine I still have, sleeping