Mitra Faridian

Mitra Faridian is the Social Media Director at San Mateo County Health Foundation. She is also a writer and a fan of all things tech. Here’s a fun fact: one of Mitra’s ancestors was a poet in the Persian court!

Poem on Belonging

HEARTBEAT OF PARDESIA

Lost   Rafte*

Words that flow from clicking tongues about
someone born away from that beloved sea.

Do they not know how the stones
of that land are familiar to
my grasp?

Whether all I see of its shores are
visions peeking through the
pines ‒ I preserve each moment
in the shutter blinks of my eyes.

Indeed, I laugh and play in the wellspring
of my culture.  Gulping in its beauty
and mystique ‒

A mystery that eludes onlookers akin to 
a gorbe's* eyes, hypnotic in their trance
but enigmatic in their meaning.

The mighty names that transversed those
soils are not foreign to me,

Persepolis, Jamshid, Land of Kings

Such company I have found
along the highway that runs through my
heart and very soul ‒

Yes, with verse I will imbue parchments
with the pulse of this land I have
always known...

In hopes that Pardesia

Beats,  beats,  beats,

Long after I have taken my
steps home.

*Pardesia: Paradise
*Rafte: Gone
*Gorbe: Cat

Copyright © 2012 by Mitra Faridian. Used with permission of the author.