Why? friends ask. Why there? Why not a deck chair and a vodka tonic by a Caribbean pool or tours of Roman palaces in flat shoes? I want the edge, I say, of white foam lace on black sand, of curling temple eaves. A blade I turn inward to incise through sedimentary strata of cultural shibboleths, stacked like T-shirts in tidy categories of size and color. I excise an infant never born in my own country. Caroler of words kept mute inside my culture's mouth - @3omniscient, hallow, awe@1 - she knows they're synonyms for @3rain, cicada, rice, star, tree,@1 the numberless of the numinous. She incants arpeggios of joy around the Why? the shrug of friends. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ETUDES DE PLUSIERS PAYSAGES DE L' AME: 1 by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE LAST MAN'S CLUB by JAMES GALVIN DAWN by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON SMOTHERED FIRES by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON REINFORCEMENTS by MARIANNE MOORE TO BE LIKED BY YOU WOULD BE A CALAMITY by MARIANNE MOORE ON THE WAY (PHILADELPHIA, 1794) by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON |