Navigating Ocean 

Last week I dropped in on Ocean Vuong.

I’d heard of him from somewhere, probably during

an accidental finding of a reading on a digital site.

Tonight, I've tracked him down on purpose.

He reads a poem from a volume in the manner,

he said, of his mother, in her voice, as if it was she

who wrote the poem. She didn’t.

Romance might say she had the poem in her,

and he simply fished it out. regardless,

who can dismiss the mother of the creator? Certainly not me.

He confesses that his mother is illiterate,–– 

but sweetly so, in the alto of his voice.

He explains that the war interrupted her education.

He says she works in a nail salon "as most Vietnamese women do"––

worked that way most of her life, believing her death was due

to inhaling the toxic chemicals of her profession.

We’ll negotiate prior to the purchase of this volume:

“Time Is A Mother” available only as a pre-order,

not due for release until April 5, 2022.

By then we’ll have come to an agreement, not over price, but to

acknowledge from reader to poet, that both are worthy.