Marking the edge of one of many circles

They speak their language and we listen
on the train, perhaps or at a café
lulled by the perceived music, drawn on
by one word in a dozen that stirs familiar
our ancient roots. Of course their talk
is as mundane as ours, all the daily needs
to communicate, to demand, make known
the self; but they in their world, we in ours—
messy, but for the moment not burdened
by meaning.

 

NaPoWriMo Day 25, prompt is to begin with a line from another poem. First line from Mark Jarman’s “Chimney Swifts,” which I discovered in the Bright Wings anthology. I also borrowed the title from Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”