MEMORIES OF MY FATHER UNDER A MOONLIT SKY

Last night, the moon wore a smile that lit up the sky;
I lay under it and the stars in my heart began to shine.

My mother sat beside the embers of an abandoned firewood,
and recounted the scars of history
growing beneath her skin.

She said to my sister with an
empty lamp yearning for a fill of oil,
That a man becomes a symphony
when he walks through a body of songs.

I suppose she misses my father with the passion of the wind
and her heart longs for him with the lonely patience of the moon.

My father is a map that bears the names of distant cities.
He holds the memory of faces that bear the traces of the earth.

Last month before he journeyed on a trip down south,
I asked him how a man glues himself
in places as mosaics of wonderment,

He smiled and quenched my thirst for knowledge with a tale,
A teary tale of how a desert became
green and lush with many flowers.