A black cloud
Hung over my birth home
No doctor available
The skills of a neighbor woman
Spare but effective
Another mouth
Added to four
He had trouble feeding
A broken down miner
His back
In a corset
In the other bed
My birth cry
Matched by
The desperate longing
Of my mother
2:30 did not provide
The only darkness
Lack of hope
Draped like crepe
Over the little house
On Lexington Avenue
Dad turned his head
Recognizing
His youngest son
Whose promise
For a future
Seemed no more
Than the son
He buried
But poverty
Breeds survivor skills
Ambition only
For the day
While tomorrow
Come with its own challenges
And so it was
An incubator of want
Devoid of pleasure
But somewhere
In the despair
We all
Found our way
