In This Small Room With Lilacs

Wendy Morton

IN THIS SMALL ROOM WITH LILACS:
ESL on Linden Street

I've arrived to read them poems.
I explain the word pomegranate:
say: red, round, sweet, rubies,
and they smile, nod.
Yes, says Ludmilla,
in the Ukraine, the same.
Osmany, from Cuba says,
sometime we have them at Christmas.
Yes, he says, rubies.

I move on to starfish,
show them the ones on my bracelet.
Say how they cling to rocks at low tide,
in a magenta wash.
Soo Jin, says in Korea they are
sometimes the colour of the sun.

Then red-winged blackbirds,
I show them a picture;
tell them how I hear their song
like falling water, when I shower outside
each morning.

Outside, even in winter? Asks Alexandra,
imagining Russian ice and snowdrift.
Even in winter, I say.

But this spring, there are ravens,
hummingbirds,
the music of blackbirds,
that I hear every morning,
speaking a language
I can't understand.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Wendy Morton's works copyright © to the author.