Speaking In Tongues📚

 
Long ago, the eyes that peered  
from windows, now shattered  
by bulldozers, across a field of  
mist-filled gullies for how many  
years, were legions who would  
later tackle and run, and then  
eventually disappear, passing  
over stones, to flirt and pose for  
posterity in the musk of sepia,  
gathering young men and boys,  
the girls and young women.
 
Now, at age five, I was with my
mother on a pilgrimage, to  
where her grandmother had  
lived across from the high  
school, teaching Latin & Music.
 
Where, on a clear fall morning  
during a war fought from planes
made over in the Valley where
later I would be born, was taken
while crossing the street on her  
way to another day, this gentle  
soul who spoke in tongues, and  
yearned to show others how it was  
done, dying for a dead language.
 
Half a century passed since, & I  
saw the plaster facade. I, so new  
myself, who could not fathom  
how it was at that hour, naked  
with truth, ghosts pouring from  
spores of limestone, its blank  
stares of gargoyles.
 
My face turned upward, my jaw
slack in awe, hearing my stylish  
mother emerging, turning slowly  
among the ruins and the distant
echo, while speaking in tongues.