At Camp Harmony

It’s 7 a.m. The bugle sprays and sounds like hot sunlight.
I roll off my straw mattress. A wave of grass bursts through

the floorboard. I step on it. It grows and grows. It lifts me 
out of this roofless barrack. Satoru, Kazuya, Noriko

too. We’re placed on a hilltop. We read Buddhist books 
and chant. Dad is here. We talk about the rocks he found.

Then, they clang a pipe. Clang a pipe and don’t stop.
I’m in my barracks again. I rub crust out of my half-shut

eyes, look for my right sock. We leave. The mess hall
is on a different block. We pass the parking lot emptied

of Buick sedans, the abandoned cotton candy machine, 
the Ferris wheel that hasn’t spun since a summer ago.

At the table, we sit with one another, all seven of us. 
We pick up our American forks. We don’t starve.