Sunday at King Fong, the Chinese Restaurant up the street

               I pick up Karen and my dinner,
consisting of shrimp fried rice,
General Tso Chicken,
and one vegetarian egg roll.
Beyond the counter
I look deep into the kitchen
at a young cook,
no older than 19.
He’s new here,
and speaks in his native language.
Mandarin? Szechwan, or Hunan province?
I am not versed enough in his dialect,
but he is a cook,
and we all speak in the same tongue:
“order, FIRE, pick up, on the fly!”
Mach schnell, bitte!
I think in German.
Ich spreche Deutsch.
Money is exchanged
between the cashier,
who has served this neighborhood
since I moved here seven years ago
and myself.
He may be thirty,
but doesn’t show it.
I say to him
“God Bless.”
The first commandment was:
“You will have no other God’s before me.”
Not
“There are no other Gods.”
So perhaps,
we are all equal in the land of Heaven.
And perhaps
the cashier and I
can someday speak the same language
that his cook and I speak,
silently.