When we are at the country house, I take him fishing
in the afternoons and cool mornings.
He baits my hook,
sits on the roots of a wild guásima tree
composing his secret verses
imagining
that I do not know.
Such sad rhymes, I tell him,
even though he has not dared to recite them
out loud.
They flicker all around him, like fireflies in the night
stray words arranging their blinking lights
into some sort of orderly
rhythm.
The sight of so much invisible music
makes me sigh.
I warn him again and again: don’t make me sad
with those flickering fireflies
of rhyme.