Endangered Language
Poetry by Francis Baptiste
Do I even know
one-hundred words?
Unlikely unfortunately,
though, I have been pushing,
committing myself toward consistency
in my learning
of this language,
Na-silk-in,
that slippery, slurry, lispy tongue,
spoken flawlessly, effortlessly
by my grandmother,
and by none other within
my family after her.
Endangered now,
this dialect.
So I, with the weight of forty years,
carry a little more
in pursuit of this Latin-esque
vernacular,
like a child —
one foot sorely in middle age,
one precariously taking its first steps.
When I concede
to actually tally the vocabulary
learned so far,
the total halts at
forty-eight.
Almost
halfway
there.