metonymy4u

                        my mother and i were both therapists

You can dance away the silence
that comes hard upon a poem’s end,
just grandstanding things aside
that you long to defend:
like my mother choosing psychology
over music, music that went
from love to family weapon.

Still, I think how sweet she chose to write
out the answer to her prayer—
a mint of hope in the book of a life,
wishing the earth would open
to swallow her pain hidden care.

And anyway, what would mine be like
if her father had stayed over yonder
beyond the sea, beyond the snow
in the land of frozen hate,
the land I was born to know?

Now we sweep the same floors
polish with the same wax.
And a bird on a daisy told me true
that there are people walking around
still alive because they talked to you.

I suppose this and all is all
that we carry,
carry underground.