Poetry

 

 

David Romtvedt

Surprise Breakfast

One winter morning I get up early
to clean the ash from the fire grate
and find my daughter, eight, in the kitchen
thumping around pretending she has a peg leg

while also breaking eggs into a bowl—
separating yolks and whites—then mixing oil
and milk. Her hands are smooth,
not so much from lack of labor as from youth.

She's making pancakes for me, a surprise
I have accidentally ruined. "You never get up early,"
she says. Now she is measuring the baking powder
into the flour, beating the egg whites into stiff peaks.

It's true. When I wake in the dark, I roll
to the side and pull the covers over my head.
"It was too cold to sleep," I say. "I thought
I'd get the kitchen warm before you were up."

Aside from the scraping of the small flat shovel
on the iron grate, and the wooden spoon turning
in the bowl, the room is quiet. I lift the gray ash
and lay it carefully into a bucket to take outside.

"How'd you lose your leg?" I ask my daughter.
"At sea," she tells me. "I fell overboard in a storm
and a shark attacked me, but I'm fine." She spins
on her good leg, a little batter flying from the spoon.

I can hear the popping of the oil in the hot pan.
"Are you ready?" she asks, thumping back to the stove.
I don't answer but, fork in hand, I sit down, hoping
That, yes, I am ready, or nearly so, and one day will be.

 

Demarcation

The three travelers
drift unevenly along the border,
a little afraid to cross.

Years later, they will remember
there was no fence, no customs office,
no guard-post or gate.

Mostly mountains, mostly dust,
and then the step across, the uneasy awareness
that there is no embassy to call.

               A young American couple who'd been asked why
               they'd broken their country's law to visit Cuba
               said, "To see what we were told we couldn't."

               But this is not Habana Vieja,
               with its crumbling nightclubs held up by music.
               This is Iran and Iraq, southern Sudan, Ciudad Juárez.

     The student with her pant leg rolled up
     to bicycle home understands. The child soldier
     from a country administered by international experts,

     the undocumented alien making up hotel rooms,
     the Vietnam vet reading the paper and asking if
     they got the dates wrong—all these understand.

It's the border, the drift of air
from one side to the other,
the traveler carrying a false ID,

and the crowds far away drawn close
to cheer from both sides, excited
that something is about to begin.

 

 

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