The other day I saw a swan
bathing in solitude at the side
of a quiet country road,
in a stream edged with wild calla.
That same night, my husband pointed up
at the crescent moon and said,
In Arabic, we call this hilal.
My uneducated monolingual throat can never fully
latch onto those alveolar trills, but for some reason
the word felt good in my mouth, rolling around
like a smooth marble of familiarity.
And to tell you the truth, the swan was just a goose,
and the stream was a ditch, and the country road
was a busy suburban thoroughfare,
a KFC on one corner, gas station on the other.
But the wildflowers were real, and even
in this merciless summer I know
I can still find what I’ve been searching for.
