Eleven or a one-two.

The Voice Is Familiar

The voice is familiar.
Power transferred to the brain
and then the heart.
Or is it the heart first?
Two weeks ago
mother asked what she'd taught me.
Hands twisting in her lap.
Sure she'd given nothing.
These are all her stories,
chants before bed
to make the shadows vanish
or on rainy days
to remember sun by.
I knew her childhood
better than my own.
Easy to get lost there
so that, some twenty years later,
we come back, join hands,
turn the lights down.
She searches for her mother,
I search for my mother.
Is she under the bed,
beneath the glass of a picture,
in hair which even now
hasn't lost its color?
I'll recognize her on sight.
She looks like both of us.
She comes in, sits by the door,
loosens the scarf from her neck,
turns to her good ear, inclines her head:

-- Rochelle Ratner