Say "Hola!" - "On Learning Spanish" - Poem by Gail Christensen

Our immigrant neighbors offer us an opportunity to reach across difference and see the beauty of other cuisines, customs, and languages. Listen as Gail, Cache Valley native, attends to the distinctive music of Spanish: 

Why I’m Taking Spanish

Because it’s music to my ears,

a call from the hemispheres, I take it,

like a slow train to the border,

in the distance a rhythm, a street band,

a bandoneon. I take it to get there,

to the nimble vowels and consonants,

my stiff Anglo tongue an instrument,

brain blazing new neural pathways.

I take it for all the times my tongue

was too timid and tied in self-doubt

to have said to those here to work

in the field, you are welcome.

To the woman who brings water and

chips to our table, I see you.

To the young man who sheet-rocked

our house, you are safe here.

But at the end of the day

when I stop by the taco truck

down on the highway to order

a dozen tamales to go and I linger there,

and Ernesto lets me go on and on

like he gets it, and he asks me questions back,

I take it for that, that doubt-defying act,

when my pounding heart lifts, fumbles

and almost fails but never does,

because Ernesto is kind.

I love how Gail’s poem points to the courage it takes to learn a new language, to overcome timidity and fear of failure — and then stumble out a few sentences in Spanish. However halting, the words nevertheless traverse the distance between two humans, turning them into friends. With a dozen tamales to top it off! 

Gail’s beautiful poem teaches us to treasure the adventure of learning a language. It’s hard! But even a few words of greeting or thanks can be magical, saying, “I see you, and I’m glad you’re here.”

The poem also quietly remembers the essential work immigrants do for our communities: They do our sheet-rocking, harvest our fields, wait on our tables. The list could be continued: They care for our elders and our children, re-shingle our houses, work in our factories, do our landscaping and repave our roads in the searing heat of summer. 

To all these we say, “We see you. We give thanks.”

~ Comment by Anne Shifrer~