93. Hunting for Arrowheads

I am trying to learn a language,

but I don’t now what it is,

a common practical type

like charades

when by miming

I am elated that you have guessed

an approximation

of what I really want to say

like in the Sahara that time when

a boy herder and I were

discussing the existence

of arrowheads in the sand

as there are on the Kansas prairie

giddy to have finally found

something recognizable

on the dusty path of our conversation

we planned to look for them on

Wednesday

only now it is

Thursday

some twenty years later

and we still haven’t gone

but that could be inconsistency

in how we each view time

it is more foreign in our bedroom

where we have communicated children

even you

appear clearly puzzled

by some lack

a point, maybe

I will find one

if I’m lucky

– Karen Barron

K. L. Barron has a weakness for landscapes, Kansas being the most enduring. She lives in the Flint Hills and teaches literature and writing at Washburn University. She’s published poems, fiction and non-fiction in New Letters, The Bennington Review, Midwest Quarterly, The Little Balkans Review, and Chickenbones et al.