(no subject)
in the quiet when the ladies pray
my mother
once heard a choir
when she was
filled to the brim
with a child
who would bring
her tears.
she said
it sounded
more real than
other choirs
but the ladies praying,
didn't hear a thing,
not a single arching
melisma with
harmony upon countless
rising and falling harmony,
not a single note
escaped from my
mother's ears.
and i wonder
if then, when his
ears had not yet
emptied of the warm
maternal waters,
the sound traveled
from her soul
to the child's,
and if he heard again
when the water
filled his ears
a second time
and filled his lungs
and like the first womb
brought him
into a new life;
if then, in
those silent months
in which we could not
be rid of tears,
if he heard it again
the choir that ascends
and descends the very
steps of heaven
the one Jacob heard
as he slept in the desert
with a stone for a pillow
and i wonder,
if he hears it still.
the echoes have been
to ears such as mine
for i have shared
that womb,
and i have shared
a part of that dying,
and sometimes
in the quiet
when the ladies pray
like my mother
i hear a choir.
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l.l