Bluebird
My mother's voice is at my throat
—"Try a scarf in the neckline"—
and on my lips: "Just a little
lipstick." Today I'm wearing both.
My "mother's voice," pitched high, carries
reprimand and care:
"No boom on the table!" My daughter
swats me as I carry her
away from the dearest
activity on earth—sticks, stones, struck
as if the coffee table were a flint.
"Barbarian," I croon
in heels. "What's that?" she asks and rips
a nylon with a fingernail.
She cries at the turtleneck
pulled over her head. "I'll give you something
to cry about!" I hush, succeeding for another
day, or an hour—another minute
late for work. Tonight I'll choose
a lullaby: "Bluebird
at my window," Mother sang to me,
a voice that could broom sorrow
through the door . . . A decal
staggered on the painted bureau,
blue wing seeking, finding no way out.
Copyright Credit: Joyce Peseroff, "Bluebird" from A Dog in the Lifeboat. Copyright © 1991 by Joyce Peseroff. Reprinted by permission of Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Source: A Dog in the Lifeboat (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1991)