Overseers (of mountains)

Of my father and I, lying parallel to this earth,

searching for gravity’s pull on our bodies. Searching

for that strange, still connection we feel to the ground,

and in turn, ourselves. Longing for the other half

of this planet, the want of wishing we could pierce

through mantle and core to find ourselves at home.

Of a dozen years spent across an ocean, its weight

multiplying with every memory remembered

from our motherland, every forgotten name of our relatives.

Of every name, and my father’s name, which was his father’s

name and is my name also, the singular thread I return to

when I find myself lost, which is to say that even in loss

there is discovery; even in want, the silent recognition

of possibility. Tonight’s discovery: my father and I

are connected by a much more internal thing

than the way we flatten ourselves to feel closer to Seoul.

I have my father’s name: Choi, meaning overseer

of a mountain. Tonight I think of every mound my feet

have touched: of mountains, peaks, hills, of apexes,

of slopes before the tips. I marvel at how dizzyingly

delightful, to look down at this land from this land,

to know the world holds its height for you at your origin

and finds you in oblivion. Tonight I oversee my

bloodline, a mountain peeking through my father’s eyes

and through my own reflected in his pupils.

Both of us, vessels from across the Pacific.

Always overseeing the tip, and moving forward.