[Afternoon Poem] Ears Are Ears―Gokdu 38 / Kim Minjeong

Still, some men in Japan are born to be sumo wrestlers

Still, the Kalenjin tribe in Kenya is raised to be long-distance runners.

Born in 1973 in Minsk, Belarus,

female gymnast Svetlana Boginskaya

wore the uniforms of three different flags: the Soviet Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Belarus,

and represented her country for 12 years across three consecutive Olympics in Seoul, Barcelona, and Atlanta.

If I had wanted that, it would have been a politician’s fate,

but Wikipedia says she runs a pizza shop in Texas, USA, so that’s her life scene.

What I wrote in my notebook was from June 2016,

and when I searched at 1:22 PM on November 17, 2019,

it said she operates an online gymnastics apparel business in Texas, USA,

and runs summer camps for gymnastics student athletes.

There are times when things appear and disappear,

but their timing shines together.

■ On the way to the hospital, with my wife on the way to the hospital, it’s still February, though the Beginning of Spring has passed, it’s still early February, is it real? Not fluttering lightly, nor flapping excessively, but gently and somewhat busily, a butterfly flies, a butterfly drifts, the first butterfly. Honey, look there, a butterfly is flying. There, there, there, just now it landed over there! My wife didn’t see the butterfly, only I saw it, the first butterfly that landed on the shaded back alley behind the hospital. Is it real? Is it really a butterfly? The first butterfly we met this year on the way to the hospital with my wife, a butterfly that crossed the midday of February and disappeared. My wife was busy holding my hand tightly to calm me down. Was it a “moment that appeared and disappeared,” that butterfly? ? Poet Chaesangwoo