Dream Of A Little Breakfast Poem by Rishma Dunlop

In my dream my father brings me tea on a tray,
chota hazari in the early hours of morning,
like the servant in his boyhood—
tea poured in white china cups
boiled milk under wrinkled skin.

I ask him to stay. I want to hear his voice.
Some canticle or ghazal or lullaby
or even "White Christmas."
But I know this is not a hill station.
This is not his beloved Simla.
It is winter in Ontario, the only sound

a footfall crunch across frosted fields.