Babel

Our honeymoon at the all-inclusive resort
was spent with people from all over the world.
Away from the provincial corner of Missouri,
having left our life behind us, we reached
out around us for comfort
but found it mostly in each other.

From the wormhole down the rabbithole
we fell back into Eden and through gates
we never knew. But the Bible story
that occurred to me more was the one
where the people all built together,
all assembled and hoped to reach heaven.

More than ever that story puzzled me.
Sunday school spoke of the chaos
that abounded, people rent asunder
without a common tongue among them.
So angry was God, I learned, that
he revoked the right to free speech.

But there in Mexico, where English was not
the vernacular, where hillfolk like us
who only owned one tongue were the minority,
we clung to one another and our common
understanding of the three or four words
we'd heard well enough to repeat.

Never closer to one another than we were
when away from our own, we shared communion
with each stranger, calling Hola when we passed.
More smiles and candor than we'd known,
less suspicion or pretense than ever at home.
After Babel, I thought, how nice it must have been.