PEPPER & WINE

Walk with me. Old harbor naked and sad. Smell of peach

in our beech trees. Leaves we ate every spring

no matter how bitter. Nettles, too, prickly like hedgehogs. 

Didn’t I hear you long before I found you? Sails, salty, put away, 

a harvest already foreign where it grew. Accent added later 

by maps and travel, by accident you may say. Geography 

nothing but an old carpet sprayed with spit. Tiresome,

memories of men who left and left, tongues drooling, 

bowing to the god of adventure. I stood in the shade

by the gate watching them leave, carefree and laughing.

Absence made me see things. When you took that long, 

didn’t I know what you were doing? Weaving nests 

and nets to find me. When you finally asked, 

I was free to welcome both spice and grapes. 

PUBLISHED IN BOOK OF MATCHES, A LITERARY JOURNAL, ISSUE SIX. FALL, 2022.

POETRY SECTION, PAGE 1.

Previous
Previous

ONE IMMIGRANT SPEAKS TO ANOTHER

Next
Next

SEVENTH GRADE AT MUDSTREAM MIDDLE