Then Speak

A wall of fog

Creeps over me

Slowly obliterating

My sense of

Reality

Of what is being

Talked about

Between you and the

Other

 

Am I on the

Outside

The opposite

Side

Unseen

My any word

Silenced

 

Memories come rushing

Back

I am a child

Again

To be seen

But not heard

As the saying goes

Words not my

Own

Whirling over my

Head

Land on me

At Grandmother’s

Every Sunday dinner

Table

 

My hair     my hair

I’d sit mute

Listen to them talk

What to do with

My hair

 

But now

Am not that

Child

I am a grown

Woman

Who blamed you

For my need to be

Included

Turned the wall of

Fog

Into ice

Then blamed myself

Trying to melt the

Ice

That lingered in my

Heart

 

Sitting in silence

I say to myself

 

Grow up

Recognize     accept

If you feel left

Out

You put yourself

There

All you have to do is

Speak

Find a pause

An intake of a

Breath

 

Then     speak

 

the poet & her father, 1939

Reconciliation (1975)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mother

When he went away and left you

He left me too

And we lived together

You and I

One woman     one child

And I wanted to grow up

To love you both

But you’d come home

From a job that drained you

That made you curl up tight

Inside yourself

I knocked and I know

You tried to let me in

While he went away

And sent letters of love to me

And I cried to live with him

I didn’t understand

 

My best friend told me this

People say your mother

Has a chip on her shoulder

I didn’t understand

 

Believe me Mother

When I tell you

I don’t remember

That time in your life

When you were ill

When your legs were weak

And you used a cane

When your eyes saw double

And the threat of disease

That would waste you

Hung over us

A girl of fourteen

Awake     awake     whose eyes

Could see     whose brain

Could think

But Mother I don’t remember

I just don’t remember

 

Mother

We are healed now

And the years between

Have made us friends

I need you Mother

When you die

No one else can care as much