It Is Music
The poet may not
visit her son
at his house,
because
she is
the ex-wife.
Two hours’ drive away
she has to live. No job. No money.
She must make her own arrangements.
Old family friends
offer her their daughter’s bed.
Amélie’s sleeping out tonight
and of course Kai can come
for supper.
The poet makes pizza for all.
A host of little ones
look on
the kneading, knocking down and rolling,
their questions climbing,
reaching, their declarations
sharing, all their funny voices
building
space
she’s lost,
been denied without a choice.
‘You’re not a part of the family.’
To be cast out –
there’s nothing worse
for a maternal creature.
Kai’s voice threads into the fabric
his low pitch she knows
beneath the children, and the older son,
with whom he’s playing at the screen,
and the char’s toddler Ouinene
has so much with raised eyebrows to say
and says it, incomprehensibly, gesturing firmly.
The friend, mother Ilse, sighs –
‘All this noise. I don’t know where
my thoughts begin and end.’
‘That’s what I long for,’ says the poet,
‘in the silence I have been condemned to;
although I know you’ve sometimes too much din.’
‘We don’t appreciate our blessings,’
replies Ilse, laughing, thinking.
The women’s voices run
slowly between those of their sons
and the children
and
it
is
music.
16th
May 2015
- Silke Heiss
