My Good Fortune

Balancing luck, the good and the bad
is a matter of perspective is it not? Take
for example, my father, a homeless orphan
at the age of twelve, wandering the mean
streets of Warsaw alone but for the company
of others like himself and there were others
like himself whom a compassionate welfare
group eventually took notice of; boys
without homes, scrambling for food to
keep themselves alive. It was arranged for
those boys of poor fortune/good fortune to
be shipped to Canada to work as indentured
farm hands until their passage was paid
through their farm labour. And then they
were free and the bonds between those boys
never broke, a filament of loyalty and love
that lasted throughout their lives even as
they matured, made a life for themselves
had families of their own and formed a
group always looking out for one another.
None ever held a grudge or blamed the
world and its unfairness for their misery
and loss. They believed the world would
soon become a better place. It did, for them.
The best fortune lay in the fact that they all
Jewish boys, left Poland before the outbreak
of the ghastly, demonic Second World War.