This tongue I have is a forked gift
as natural to me a fingerprint.
I do not think of the things I lift,
or lilt or trill or drop or crop,
nor seed the already-littered earth with.
My history is this story--
a tongue entwined within several faces
a pastiche of words of many places, yet
my spoken word would leave no doubt
to my geographical redoubt,
indeed some Henry Higgins could
place it within a neighborhood.
The English language built
cathedrals with
the plundered lumber of sunnier
climes,
and if my accent drips
with juniper and lines
and a certain bracing tonic,
I can only toast the tongue I
host, and hope my tongue also hosts me
allowing the things I speak to be
as meaning-laden
as I hope they'd be.
