Baking Bread Poem by Anuradha Bhattacharyya

Having sold his entire life
Baking bread in a tavern
With a shaky disoriented wife,
My father had a plan.

He exhorted me out
Of the dull, charcoaled shop
To the prominent hub
Of the world of books.

I, bespectacled
Under the lamp,
Enlightened my vision
For a better profession …

Thus far was all I could stamp
On my credentials.
The rest is beyond my reach,
Beyond my father's dreams.

Disappointed,
To the core of infancy,
I, belligerent,
Pedal back to the bakery.