Viet
Jeff Burt
He has forgotten the phrase,
the fragrant foreign accent
evoking soft auburn light
over rice fields, the buffalo
ankle deep in brown water
and white-winged ducks,
how joy rose to his cracked lips
describing the glint of tin
roofs in the morning, a silver fog.
With a bicycle and a tin pail
slopping water, he smiles
as if the percolation ponds of San Jose
are his paddies, his own reserve.
In the reeds he hides one, two,
three extra poles, his enemy
no longer wardens but cocky
cormorants he curses.
“Fish,” he cries, holding up his seine
and squints from the sun. For a moment
he is no longer immigrant, alien,
ex-patriate, he is home, home
smiling with a net to fill
the crater of his hunger, to fill
the void in his heart, home
in Quang Doc Ho.
Jeff Burt
He has forgotten the phrase,
the fragrant foreign accent
evoking soft auburn light
over rice fields, the buffalo
ankle deep in brown water
and white-winged ducks,
how joy rose to his cracked lips
describing the glint of tin
roofs in the morning, a silver fog.
With a bicycle and a tin pail
slopping water, he smiles
as if the percolation ponds of San Jose
are his paddies, his own reserve.
In the reeds he hides one, two,
three extra poles, his enemy
no longer wardens but cocky
cormorants he curses.
“Fish,” he cries, holding up his seine
and squints from the sun. For a moment
he is no longer immigrant, alien,
ex-patriate, he is home, home
smiling with a net to fill
the crater of his hunger, to fill
the void in his heart, home
in Quang Doc Ho.