The Southern Cross

Well, I'm back. I went home, and do you know?

It really was home.

I found that poem I mentioned a few posts earlier, that I'd been looking for. I think it's really funny; not the poem, but that it's about the Southern Cross, and wishing I could go there tomorrow. Because, well, I did.

I'd forgotten you could see it from Bonaire, and was just thinking of seeing it in Uganda when I wrote the poem... and when I did see it in Uganda, I guess that's why it seemed so familiar to me, because I did know it already. And going back was so unexpected; just a one day decision with a ticket the next day!

Anyways. I thought I'd post it here now.

Meet me under the Southern Cross,
Just now a distant
Memory
Hovering over my consciousness
In silent celestial garb.

Meet me under the Southern Cross,
Where once our paths
Entwined
Pulling our hearts together before
Sending us off into time.

Meet me under the Southern Cross,
So deeply south,
So terribly high,
So achingly long from now.

Meet me under the Southern Cross,
I’d be there tomorrow
If only I
Could.

Poem...

A poem I wrote Saturday afternoon, for fun. The correct formatting doesn't show up on here, but oh well.

Dutch
I counted once the
language books
hiding in my home.
Serbo-Croat chatting
with Latin I and II.
The English-French taunting
its two counterpart-textbooks
(they being only level one, and
sadly, badly beaten).
My proud Slovensko-Anglicky slovink
(squat and robust like a banker) next to
One Kyrgyz feeling small and out of place and
One kimchi-dreaming Korean.
Nine ruling Russians watch
From their balconies across my walls,
Being four more than the
Sulky English sitting next to
Three Swahili soldiers.
We won’t count the Bibles,
with their two languages more, and
We’ll overlook the zoo—
(a delightful dictionary of foreign terms).
We won’t even count my dushi Papiamento
in exile far away.
And though I missed a
couple phrasebooks, I’ll
quote the tally now:
That’s twenty-five language books
hiding in my house.
Twenty-five languages! And not
one of them the
first in which I wrote.