Taking a Language

I hear them, my husband and son,

before I relax into sleep,

saying the sounds in French

I have almost forgotten.

My husband struggles along with our son:

La famille. Leurs mots. Deux, trois.

I don't join them. I have enough to do.

Every day the same steps to another day,

pulling blinds until the metal slats slide

to a tidy line above the window.

One bed made at a time, one side at a time,

my arms not long enough to reach across

the space between us. I have grown impatient

with slow progressions, with touch that may not lead

to love, the time it takes

to wait for the ends of sentences, and yet

in high school we couldn't even complete

a simple Latin sentence

as we followed our teacher through each

person of a verb, singular, amo, amas, amat,

plural, amamus, amatis, amant, present, past,

future perfect conditional. We didn't know

where we were going. I had no idea

in that class I would meet the boy whose tongue

was the first to reach to mine.

It took our entire sophomore year to translate

Caesar's accounts of the individual

customs of the tribes, the Helvetii, Belgae.

All Gaul was divided into single parts.

Evenings facing a new grammar,

nights in the back seat of a Chevy,

years before we were proficient

in the language of the country of love,

before we ever entered

a French cathedral, found the pattern

of small stones lined

to lead the devout to a state of prayer. Placing

the left foot one stone in front of the right,

heel and sole on stone,

one does not notice the rose window above

until, with an accidental glance,

light explodes, wheeling

spheres within spheres,

mother, child, man, innumerable

facets of glass. I had forgotten.

And below, a smaller window

where shoemakers bend to their task,

piercing the tiny holes lined in a row

to draw the laces through,

One, two at a time.