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Portugués

(for Astrud Gilberto)

 

This truly foreign language
………….absorbs me into its differences,

rosetta stone hidden
………….             in a cave of similarities

certain words share
………….              with those of spanish

linda    corazon    feliz
………….pretty  heart      happy

restless as a willow
………….in a windstorm,

Astrud tan tall young
………….                           love,    you go girl

to Ipanema, your name
………….             teutonic      oxymoronic,

Astrud Gilberto you
………….            girl from Ipanema

so lovely your alto
………….              unclassifiable.

Astrud, you girl
………….             tall tan lovely

spring feverish
………….             discontented

a nightingale
………….              without a song to sing.

You’re as pretty as a baby
………….           on a swing and you feel

so giddy,
………….             a robin on its wing

and I’m expecting
………….             preferring

the less decipherable
………….             the portuguese

with its likeness
………….          to the spanish

But you you’re as busy
………….             as a spider spinning daisies

in ingles, so it might as well
………….            be spring — dee-dee  doo-doo

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Ed Coletti is a poet widely published internationally and he curates the popular blog “No Money In Poetry.”  Additionally, Ed is a painter. middling chess player, and harmonica player.  He lives with his wife Joyce in Santa Rosa, California.  His upcoming book is titled Apollo Blue’s Hard and The Gods of Spring.

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