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Dreams bloom from the sunny sunflowers
Fragrant in their wake, a burst of colours
Rain sprinkled
A canvas, ready to be framed
Nurtured in the streams, by rivers and lakes
Questions none
who harboured them
Or how many
  May 8 Vianne Lior
Birdie
I don’t believe in heaven
But if I somehow did
I know you’d be there waiting for me
How you were back when you lived
I don’t believe in heaven
But if I went there I would see
Four little furry faces
So happy to see me
I don’t believe in heaven but
Sometimes I wish I could
If you had ever spoken I think
You’d say that I should
Because
The closest I’ve been to heaven
Was being loved by you
The innocent love from pets now lost
Is the truest love it’s true
My mother was always a better singer
                                than she was a cook.

She may have burnt a lot of things but
                              never missed a note,
         especially when Harry Belafonte
came on the transistor kitchen radio-
a voice so pure it made her cry with joy.

“There’s a hole in the bucket dear Liza,
                                                     dear Liza,”
                         he sang echoing her past,
                                                 the divorce,
                         her humbling present life.

The duet had the reply she wanted to say
to everything and sing it like Odetta--
                             “Well fix it, dear Henry
                                                 dear Henry,
                                                          fix it.”

It was her kitchen cooking song and
           and we would sing it together
            when Harry wasn’t on the air.

We sang it so often,
                                  switching voices.
                                      that I believed
                         she could fix anything
                                     and I could too.    

When we got to the fortieth line
                the meatloaf was burnt
                                              on top.

I ate it all with a lot of ketchup.
She just cut off the burnt part
                and fed it to the dog.

My sister,
                             two brothers
                              and stepdad
                             ate it quietly,
                        building up a lot
                                         of bad
                 meatloaf memories.

All the other kids had
                          their own songs
                that she sang to them
                                but she sang
                                               only
                         Belafonte to me.  

“Daylight come and me wan' go home,”
                    she sang to me in a whisper
                   before kissing me goodnight.

Calypso more than Salsa echoed
                            her Boricua pride,
                 the youngest of thirteen,
            yet never born to the island.

“Midnight come  and she wan’ go home,”
I sang to her open casket 22 years later,
                              kissing her on the head,
                      taking the hole in the bucket,
                                     along with Belafonte
                                                   to the future.
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