Unabridged Lexicons
Darkness descending,
And a silence… not pregnant with words
I look around in panic
“Where did I leave them?
– Where did I leave my words?”
“Did I drop them on the way out
“Or did the custom officer not allow them in?”
“Or did I forget to pack them altogether
“In the frantic frog leap from one life to another!?”
**
But then, I did everything right
I faced with composure
The onslaught of the native gaze
Rapped in a long correctly worded phrase!
And threw back a piece of my analytical mind
“Not a big deal” look on my face.
Running breathless to catch up with proverbs
Never cringing at the rawness of idiomatic speech
Occasionally hiding behind a foreign expression
Gasping for air!
Aware of my full surrender
To the unforgiving laws of syntax!
I never confessed to anyone
That even in a world that loves building forbidding walls
Unabridged lexicons are scary things!
**
Why did it take me twenty years to see
That you had my missing words?
That I had never lost them!
May 4, 2000, St. Louis