Today's poem is by Phuong T. Vuong

Traversence
       

What is the speed of light at my desk.

I count to five slowly after a flash of lightning.

A mosquito dies in my notebook. I do not notice when.

There is a light between the pages. There.

Sky, the brightest blue behind the catalpa tree.

Green lit up—a vision of dark stalk and sun—glow leaves.

Rain becomes hail becomes soft rain then—silence.

I am a child in yellow rain jacket hopping across a puddle.

The brain makes electrical connections at the speed of 156 miles per hour.

The speed of a Google algorithm: 2 seconds.

A smell of some old thing in the street transports me in .04 seconds.

My hand reaches out for this tug. In my mind, the hand remains extended.

I time travel too easily.

I ring of repeating names ( ( ((Lai. Ðoan Thi Gan. Lê Thi Lang. Ro.)) )

Their beings sum to the ratio of names I do not know.

My grandmother dies and I can never remember her age.

Other times the electrical connections stutter. Obstructed spark plug.

Instead, remember palm leaf's drag on dusty ground.

Remember adolescent re—meeting her.

A cement well in the afternoon, countryside. Sweetness of ripe jackfruit.

Heavy water evaporates quick in the tropical heat to return again.

My grandmother dies and she is always dying.

What is the speed of memory?

The speed at which ancestors travel: ____ .

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Copyright © 2024 Phuong T. Vuong All rights reserved
from A Plucked Zither
Red Hen Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission