Hearing foreign languages spoken around me
Living in a multinational community
I hear the tone of voice but understand little
Except a few words in Spanish and fewer in Korean.
Going for a walk beside the lake in the park nearby
Hearing many other languages and seeing the person
I make a tenuous guess where the speaker was born:
This one perhaps Eastern Europe, the other perhaps South
Asia.
As I try to understand what they are talking about
A strange remembrance passes through my brain
Before I understood language, when words were a jumble
Before my first conscious memory.
The awareness is something like a waking dream
Like when some smell or sound takes you back
A strong feeling that you can’t place exactly
That has no words but takes hold of your thoughts.
Half awake first thing in the morning I hear the fish crows
Calling kwok kwok through the open window
Speaking their familiar language I do not understand.
For a moment I have a vague memory of some time before.
This indistinct recall is a recurring experience for me
Different particulars but somehow the same elusive
recognition
Like feeling someone looking at you
Who looks away when you look at them.
I think this is not an early symptom of memory loss
Since I remembered well the details from 60 years ago
Last month revisiting my childhood home
Talking to another kid who grew up on the block.
Is this what happens to the older brain?
Daydreaming more, letting the mind wander
What’s happening in this moment not so important
When millions of moments have come and gone.
Like a reverie looking out the bus window
Traveling the same familiar route
Catching a glimpse of someone or something
Imagining being off the bus and in that other place.
We soon move on to the next thought.
The river of time takes us along asleep or awake
Babbling away to those who listen
Who may understand its tone like a voice.
