Poetry

Sometimes I enter the small chambers of the God of Forgetting 
and take my place at his feet 
and kneel 
and bow my head.

From here I can see the children
running across the long field 

for no other reason
than
they are fast. 

Apples belong to the genus Malus. I stand with my hips pressing into the sink’s marble,
rinsing and twisting these sandy, gunmetal stems out of the fat fruit 

Forgive me, 
I have smuggled them away
from my father’s house to this sodden pitch
in the middle of my life, their names 
asleep under my tongue. I have walked

to practice intense study. to research. to seek again. to require confirmation,
a proof. to believe.     to believe in knowing because it can be said
again and again. the proving of a theorem.    now the corollary: to have learned

I cannot remember the last meal I shared with my father.
Only those long last nights slipping him what ice chips
he could still stomach and then swabbing his chapped lips
with a wetted pink sponge.

Confusion is the foreigner’s advantage. Natives 
tamp the nuance in their sounds. Stranger 
seeking refuge pockets vowels, picks gesture,
learns body, gets caught up on the cobble