poetry

Gold
by Cesar Ruiz Aquino

Premier poet Edith
Was showing me what husband
Ed
Had brought from Thailand –
A gift from the king,
Or was it the wife
Queen Sirikit.
It was my first time to see gold:
"It's something."
Not in trance
But for once
If tentative, spontaneous –
Each spoon, fork, and knife
Like a magic wand
In repose.
Perhaps I imagined it
In someone’s hand.
"It's something,"
Edith echoed
In generous
Assent.
But it was more.
I was forty,
The age when one is old
And young –
To her student
Of some twenty years
It would take another beginning
To dawn,
Though I was close.
Poetry is drawn
From an inability
To say everything,
Almost an inability
To say anything,
Before gold.

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