In the East
The Kurdish server realized
that two languages were spoken
with our two soups.
Chicken soup and lentil soup.
English and Turkish.
He tried his English on me.
He spoke Turkish to my wife.
"It is nice to speak more
than one language."
Yes, I said enthusiastically,
not realizing I had breached
the social divide. Americans
in ancient lands stumble like giants.
No Lilliputians in sight that night.
Soon five Kurdish servers swarmed
the table to see an American.
"We can not learn our language
in school," the first server informed us,
but we already knew this.
I learned as much Spanish working
in kitchens and mowing grass
as at university. I'm still not fluent.
New Mexico is not part of Mexico.
Amicalola means "falling water"
in what's left of the Cherokee language.
Yeats wrote in English, not Gaelic.
Our Kurdish server, a subsistence laborer,
seemed to think the English language
was the harbinger of social equity.
The Turks remember the Brits at Gallipoli
and know Americans sell guns to anyone,
no matter what language they speak.
Hastily down the steps of that roadside diner,
the soup in my belly warmed my American breath. The moon was a flatbread dipped in the soup of the stars of the East.
Soup as language. Great find. Good poem, but a bit a sad story. Keep traveling. And writing.