Portrait in Burnt Orange and Bitter Almonds
       

Perhaps to escape violence or war, to escape
living in one tiny room . . . on a ship from Spain,

on a ship from Hong Kong, on a ship from India,
my great-grandparents left the countries of their birth

to travel for opportunity, for safety, for love.
Yes, for love, because members of my family have

a penchant for marrying people their parents deem
"inappropriate": a Chinese cook marrying an Indian

maidservant; an indentured Spaniard marrying
a Puerto Rican Taino woman; and so on. Even the two

of us, two men marrying each other. Sitting on a terrace
overlooking Lake Como, we were nothing more

than minor nobility, something only my English
great-grandparents understood. On my father's side,

regardless of origin, poverty. You sipped grappa,
and I chose to sip amaretto, the warm orange liquid

made from the almond but better for the digestive tract
than the other potion brewed from almonds. I called it

my poison, despite the fact I knew full well it was not
cyanide. All of my paternal ancestors would have worked

on this estate as servants, as gardeners, as handymen.
Love makes people mad, my love. It asks of a man

or woman to leave one's family, one's country,
all for the sake of the beloved. For centuries, immigrant

has been a dirty word, but I am an immigrant, the result of
four generations of immigrants. I watch the horizon, the sun

setting, in much the way my ancestors did, with a foolish sense
of hope and an irreconcilable sadness, with the knowledge

a sunset is a sunset in any land, regardless of where you call home.

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Copyright © 2022 C. Dale Young All rights reserved
from Prometeo
Four Way Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission