Tiny Cakes
On the news today,
the man, a baker, says
he is a cake maker, his art form, his joy.
He & his boys fled the horrors of war
w/ a sack of self-rising flour & hid
in a razed dovecot, now roost for wild birds
mapped by trash & a fortress of flies.
Glad for shelter, the man & his two sons
did not eat the eggs or disturb the nests.
Guests grateful for stay, each day they rejoiced
in noises of new life, hatchlings as gifts
of chirp & flight.
The man scavenged bottle caps
& baked his sons tiny cakes.
The birds grew fat on flies (& crumbs).
Baker papa & his boys survived.
Thin but alive, they joke about hope
& self-rising flour.
Charlotte M. Porter lives and writes in an old citrus hamlet in North Central Florida. Find her most recent poems, mostly political, in Neologism, Broken Antler Magazine, Apofonie (Ukraine), The Garlic Press, and Hogtowne Quill.
The Marbled Sigh 