Again I have taken to listening to conversations
I don’t understand, languages I will never learn
I tell myself that this eavesdropping
is for research only, perhaps it will
generate some poetry, language begets
language and — immediately the world
swells up, and I begin to see how syllables
can bounce out of toasters, or are dropped delicately
to dissolve in tea cups, how vowels fall through
the fine holes of a colander, phrases you want
to swallow whole made of sounds that shine,
a globule of light at the end of spoons, those
bits of table talk I try very hard to catch between
my fingers or chopsticks, delicious amateur nothings.