Vineyards In The Distance Poem by Alicia Patti

My father told me he ate rats
to stay alive during the First World War,
and while he lay in the rotting fields,
he thought he saw vineyards in the distance,
glistening in the sun.
He could not reconcile why he should
die for a cause he did not understand
or why they came for him while
he was tending his grapes so far away
in Sicily.
His mother wailed when they
took him away, while his father’s bony
finger traced a purple cross in the air, bare
feet never ceasing, stepping
to the beat of the drums.