317/365

i had no choice but to be a poet
beneath the veil and angry scowls
they showed you about us on tv,
we persians have long worshipped
the rhyme of verse and the winelight
under which it is written and read.

in our home there was a threadbare
copy of the hafez revealed on late nights,
illuminated by candle glow, hand to heart,
read it slow-to the guest waiting
for their fortunes told.

my parents reveried this tome,
to me as a child it was magical,
i’d thumb its pages when they
weren’t home, admiring the calligraphy
wondering how it was that this script- that so
effortlessly fell from their lips had become
so foreign to me.  

years later my father and i would share a bed
in shiraz outside of hafez’s tomb. laying awake
in the darkness i wondered how it could be
i felt so foreign even there, which was meant
to feel like home.