To the Sea

Sometimes when you start to ramble
or rather when you feel you are starting to ramble
you will say Well, now I’m rambling
though I don’t think you ever are.
And if you ever are I don’t really care.
And not just because I and everyone really 
at times falls into our own unspooling
—which really I think is a beautiful softness
of being human, trying to show someone else
the color of all our threads, wanting another to know 
everything in us we are trying to to show them—
but in the specific, 
in the specific of you
here in this car that you are driving
and in which I am sitting beside you
with regards to you 
and your specific mouth
parting to give way
to the specific sweetness that is
the water of your voice 
tumbling forth—like I said 
I don’t ever really mind
how much more 
you might keep speaking
as it simply means 
I get to hear you 
speak for longer. 
What was a stream 
now a river.

Copyright © 2023 by Anis Mojgani. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 18, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“This poem comes from how things in ourselves we are sometimes self-conscious about are often things in us that others love, and also speaks to the humanness of wanting to be known by and to know others. A person in my life whom I love often says she is rambling when she seemingly starts to ramble, and, between her being a quiet person and me loving the sound of her voice, I take little issue with this. One evening on a drive, this very thing occurred, and a poem speaking to this began to arrive.”
—Anis Mojgani