After “Baker’s Son” by Shahé Mankerian
I.
Baba is a
good man. He
takes off his shoes
in the closet
after work.
Mama, luminous
like the candle
she lit for him
the first time
they met,
Welcomes
him, wearing a skirt—
I tell them to get
a room.
He pads down the hall.
Upon returning,
he smells of
the garden in
Mama’s dreams.
Before dinner,
while he plays
the guitar,
Baba reads the
circle of fifths
like the Bible.
I close my eyes
and listen to
his prayers.
His fingertips
pluck notes of
family, and the
rests are tremors
of silent memories.
II.
When Baba’s pinky links
with mine during shoorch
bar,* he is a child again—
He remembers the craters
landscaping oranges picked
during summers near
the Mediterranean Sea.
Instead of running
away from the bomb that
landed on his neighbor’s
building in Beirut,
He no longer has to spend
his steps looking for shelter
in rubble, because he is safe in
this circle moved by music.
III.
I have eyes
like Baba’s
old soul.
They are
the night sky,
balancing
a perfect
planet.
Then dawn,
rising from
the stirring
ocean.
When he sits
next to me
cupping tea—
I know he
is at ease.
IV.
His eye pressed
against a loupe,
Baba inspects
an engagement
ring.
He has just set
the center stone
in four prongs—
2.5 carats and
nearly flawless.
When I see
his cracked
and blackened
fingers,
pinching
This fragile
sliver, I think of
when his hands
were once empty.
Then I feel
forlorn—
like diamond
dust.
Yet, it does not settle,
for it flows between us—
Until
we eat
cake.
*Shoorch bar (Շուրչ պար) is a traditional Armenian circle dance.
