Homecoming

Gates forged in hard sunlight
Open to their frozen fields
Ploughed with ice, and iron.
The soldier touched me
Hands trembling like a lover,
Eyes wet with rain.
Please take it, drink this
What have they done to you all
 Oh god
I drank,and vomited
The world out of me
How god hated us 
there.
I am taut, thin
as a lampshade
still lit by a sickly glow.
Driftwood, discarded paper
Ankle deep, knee deep
Neck deep in tides
Of clothes and shoes
An ocean of spectacle glass
and twisted wire.
         *
Sliding along train tracks
greasy with smoke
from the killing machine,
I roost in a tree, just starting to bloom
Before flying home, arching
A Chagall bride in a starry sky.
My home carved out
In an empty town
Now lit by the lamps of others.
Uncertain I wait, 
A pair of hungry eyes
Sinking behind the wallpaper's 
pattern.
Transformed, filthy, out of mind
I watch the family I do not know,
Plump and peaceful
She cooks at my mother's stove,
He rests his greying head in 
my father's chair.
A boy dreams with flushed cheeks
In my childhood bed, on summer nights
The radio says its prayers.
       Thanks be to god!
There is truly so little that 
we need
    For happiness.


                          

Anna Potter June 21