My grandmother wrote poems
in Japanese,
Forming characters into
ancient rhymes
Late at night between coughs
and heating tea.
Her days were spent bending
over blossoms
In humid greenhouses her
father had built
To root their lives in American
loam.
She spent her evenings
patching the quilted
Needs of my mother and her
two sisters,
The eldest named for the new
land they seeded.
Her poetry was drawn in
characters
Which cannot be read; her
elegant style
Too embedded in time to be
deciphered
Today, but each stroke, no
matter how small,
Paints the ineffable
migrant’s story
And any grandchild can read
the details.
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