What There Is To Be Said of Home

from: "Me to You", by Alastair Reid "...write me about the weather. Perhaps a letter across water, something like this, but better, would almost take us strangely closer to home. Write, and I'll come." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Monterrey, Nuevo Leon Dizzied by the whirl of crowds On sidewalks, seen through windows -- Reflected in mirrored, columned walls -- I drink, I eat, I mull and fret, I yearn, Little lulled by homely music Softly playing beneath sonorous Strains of Spanish (Beautiful tongue, not yet my own, But now not strange to me -- Not wholly foreign.) I sneak sidelong glances, I peek, I stare. I feign indifference: A pseudo-cosmopolitan air. I am quiet and excessively polite, Not yet knowing how to be rude In this still stiff idiom. And, I am intensely lonely -- Hungry for a caressing, offhand phrase, Only a stray familiar word, hardly heard, Whispering all there is to say of home.