Alone I ate my supper,
then went walking downtown
in the darkness,
I passed by Baghdad,
strange name
for an Indian restaurant,
across the street
is a little bar, and outside
sat neighborhood ahjusshis
and uni students,
I can't say where
one set of shoulders
ended and the other began,
a bunch of men
all in a line of little stools
among fairy lights and lanterns
pink, blue, yellow,
between them I see
the server standing, his features
unmistakable in the crowd---
long nose, deep eyes,
he was working
at Baghdad last time,
and a tall, skinny child,
maybe eight or nine
rubs his eyes and looks
up at the foreign man,
notes of broken Korean
the kind spoken to children
float through the
puddled street, and the child
with perfect vowels and consonants, replies
"Appa," and I pause,
his dark skin and round eyes
light brown hair
take on a new meaning,
he follows his father
across the street, into the restaurant
where just two weeks ago
the smell of spices
and colorful tapestries
transported us to another world---
but isn't this the one
we actually live in,
changing and
bringing unexpected replies
to our many questions,
my soul suddenly becomes
still in the night,
and I pass on.
No comments:
Post a Comment