A Traveller's Apology

How right that
the language of buildings
(though dressed differently from
country to country) is universal.

We recognize a bedroom and the bath—
we enter rooms through doors,
view the countryside through
windows (where a cloud is always
up) and roadways, paths, from
dwelling to dwelling are
unconscious signposts directing us
to an understood destination.

If only language—that glue binding
our minds to our experiences—
were that easy.

Let's converse in the poetry
of doorknobs and blinds—
the way blue paint has peeled
from the windowsill as couplets
(over a division of rhyme)—
how a careless pot has wandered
into the haiku of flour/sigar/
salt and pepper cannisters—
how the piano-key staircase
is frantic with the iambs of laughing children.

The language of a street corner—
in lines and in stores,
at airports and over dinner—
that language is the craft
of time and place—an argument
of cultures—too often so right
at latitude 43 and so wrong
about the 67th.