this morning

by Jose Hernandez Diaz

After W.S. Merwin

The sun comes through the window like a bird to a tree

I rise bloom again something free for once it can’t

Change this time I’ll hold tight the steering wheel

In this moment between a star and a galaxy we

Part when I go downstairs to make scrambled eggs

With tortillas and ketchup like a blue-collar Mexican-

American coffee no milk just sugar I remember 

The words my mother said when she was going

To start a new job she said a challenge is not something 

To fear walk through the door with your head 

Held high learn but lead soon it will be routine

This life like truth like love is a puzzle

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Crazyhorse, Georgia Review, Huizache, Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, Witness Magazine, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading Anthology 2011. He teaches creative writing online and edits for Frontier Poetry.