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Moments ago turned on the radio for background classical music—and Bolero fell out with its insistent rhythm: dum deda-ditty de, dada dum, dada da—So of course when I start working on the "Learning Spanish" project, the poem collides with the persistent beat as I recite the lines out loud seeking a balance between the stanzas.

And R.'s parents walk into the poem unexpectedly, making their lunch and coffee in their home on the island—I see them singing to each other in a casual manner, not as a fifties musical with sudden troupe of dancing couples waltzing in the room— but a more subtle reality— a connection built between language, ocean, phonetics:

...the same manner your parents
move about their narrow kitchen, a casual salsa,
following rituals and patterns
of making cafe con leche, then

simmer pink beans
with chunks of stewed gourd,
while a stalk of green plantains arches,
leans forward to a ripeness,
leans forward to listen

to your parents humming
with the radio, an unrecognizable lyric,
a washed-out blue tune,
the same color of the streets in the capital-city
which run as streams of faded beryl tones...

Now what remains is to shift the scene back to the original theme...
•
Patterns of blackbirds
lift up, rising overhead.
What does this resolve?