A Sudden Stillness
She told it at family gatherings, until
I felt sure I remembered, too,
from some space between lifetimes--
my kicks inside her wet womb
before storytime with her first graders.
Once upon a time and I lay still,
listening to the tales unfold,
was stilled again as a newborn with colic,
pain carried away by the wings of once upon
into the late rainy nights.
Now, I know she was Mnemsyne, divine lover of Zeus;
I was her child-muse, gifted these sacred
stories yet to be scribed, my feet motionless,
my heartbeat a mere breath in the wind.
(This poem, too, was inspired by the challenge Robert Brewer threw out in this post in Poetic Asides. Thank you, Robert. My Muse needed some stirring up) I've honed the poem slightly since posting on Robert's site.
7 comments:
I really like this one, Pris. "I felt sure I remembered, too" is like most of those early memories that have oftentimes been remembered for us. That "space between lifetimes" is lovely, too. The last four lines are great.
pain carried away on the wings of 'once upon'
wish this was true for all.
good poem Pris
Thanks, Helen. I know..I think of that movie, A Love Song for Bobby Long where the young woman in the movie talks about having no-one who remembers her as a child, to tell her the 'cute little things she did'. We take that for granted if we have it. I had all the ancestral photos mother had inherited, along with photos I added of family members over the years for twenty years. In the first part I wrote on the scrapbook pages every story mother could remember about any ancester and then began to fill in with stories of my own as I saw them unfold. I scanned most of it a few years ago and passed it to a second cousin with a big family so the stories could live on, but I doubt anyone will continue writing them now. I seemed to be the only person interested in setting them down.
And Scot, I wish that was true for us all, too.
The riffing on the once
upon is really drifty,
mystical, and nicely
bobbed as well...really nice.
And the wrappers of the
class and the mythology
give it more worlds.
This is great!
I'm getting into 'dream pop'
right now, so I'm extra resonant
to that.
This is lovely Pris. I have just been over to see the ''new baby'' on the street. The innocence of a new life is overwhelming. Thanks for sharing.
This is wonderful and simple beautiful.
Thank you for sharing it with us, Pris.
Best wishes
Annie
thank you all for stopping by!
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