The Gift My Friend Gave Me

The Gift My Friend Gave Me

In a cafe',
sipping coffee,
my friend would read to me,
Persian poetry, in Farsi,
his native tongue.
The paper he held,
covered in exotic symbols,
graceful curves and dots
on the blue-lined paper,
like notes of music,
played right to left.
As he read them,
my eyes would close,
to hear the poem breathing,
feel it's pulse,
lose myself in the caress of each
beautiful, melodic sound,
rolling into the wave of the next,
feeling each end rhyme.
It felt so familiar,
a primal recognition
of our ancient voice,
a soothing lullaby sung by a mother,
rocking vibrations felt
deeply in the body,
comforting the soul.
In an instant,
my mind fell wide open,
I understood, that poetry
transcends language,
it's meaning secondary,
to the repetition of sounds,
the meter and cadence,
the universal sound
of our own heartbeat,
our first inhale of breath
into newborn lungs.