what makes a home
too long ago to remember exactlyI slept one night beneath the stars
on the property of a man whose name I forget
in a country to which I may never return
and when I slept that night I slept alongside
many who are strangers to me now but family then
not adults yet far past childhood
having traveled so far without even speaking the language
there against each other in the cold and the dark
with nothing to fear his food in our bellyand the earth below
and the man’s watch making the vast so gentle and easy
like this kind of thing was guaranteed
and when I awoke there was dew on my nose
and the sun was as new as everything