On Turning Forty-Nine
 

I know, darling

but aren’t we so alive 

when we step off platforms 

amidst Alaskan spruce 

carabiners slicking our ropes 

your fingers strumming my hair

sticky citrus resin 

in our mouths, our whoops 

streaming like ribbons 

between branches?

Baby, let’s release our sorrows 

from their cells, watch 

them flutter freely trilling 

like snowbird sparrows 

returning to nests
hidden in tall grass.

Sonnet
 

I repeat Ruh-ZEE-yah with patient smile.

My name, its new American beat, flows

buttercream-trimmed with sweetness and guile. 

But, can’t we call you something easy, like Rose?

My smile and its remains, clot. In scrawled chalk

at school, I write my name but then erase

myself. I’m the mouse, tick tock up the clock,

my English, clay accent reshaped by place.

I could carve in stone rather than relent,

but, then again, why hold sacred its sound?

In Arabic, RUH-dih-yaa means content

but, within English Rose, can I be found?
 

            My father says, Listen hard, you are not lost

            but he is gone. And, to heed a ghost must cost.