In the carousel of life,
they ride winged steeds to distant lands,
countries bob up and down,
Home is a phoneme that will stubbornly assert itself
in a new language,
slip in like a crumbling
glacier into the roiling sea of
vowels, conjugations, tenses, articles …
I will chant a hundred times ‘a’ as in apple, ant,
mat a a a …
their ears will hear the Wakhan ridge
call to them … hear the fading drum of the Hindu Kush,
they show up unerringly
glittering as stars in Orion’s belt,
day after day
the light in their eyes
steers my course;
they haven’t learnt to dream yet,
desires dormant as mice waiting in the walls,
but I relearn the forgotten alphabet of
beginnings
from their courage …
if this table is a boat,
English is the oar guiding their course in
this land of ‘milk and honey.’
The tousled-hair boy has the purity of an angel (and wants
to be Shah Rukh Khan someday), the oldest in
her hijab exudes a quiet determination,
the middle one is in a hurry to conquer
the world, answers tumble
from her mouth unchecked
like the willful Amu Darya,
they teach me to break
bread.
Copyright © 2025 by Usha Akella. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 10, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.