Front Street
Hartford, Connecticut
1944

My father, who raised roses and rifles,
who survived with eight siblings in four rooms
and emerged with nothing onto the street
where the ghosts of vendors still haunt the light
of waning summer nights, who left with just
the scraps of two languages, neither of
which could hide the truth, crossed the river which
had swallowed his family more than once,
and settled in to a tiny square house
in a field where only moments ago
plowshares toiled through harvest-days until the
stubble field stretched from the forest to the
road where my father would drive back and forth
hardening his loneliness with silence.