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Serenade

2013 Poetry Contest Honorable Mention Poem

You wonder why I’m at the piano
in the middle of the morning when I should be
working, but last night my mother—yes,
I know she’s long dead—last night my mother
lurked again in the brooding forest of
her mental illness, pruning with her sharp
shears the tiny shoots of trust just beginning
to sprout in the springtime of my growing.

No one told me that night what she tried
to do in the back pantry. I was watching
the moth hit the chimney of the kerosene lamp
and fall in a crumple on the kitchen table when
my big sister rushed me upstairs without a word
of why I had to go to bed so early and without
even staying long enough to help me say
the Angel of God, My Guardian Dear.

I don’t know if I actually heard my mother
wailing downstairs afterwards or if I dreamt
that part. But sometimes, like last night,
the black forest she planted in the back pantry
of my childhood creeps like Birnam Wood
to the very windows of my sleeping. And the only
way I know to soothe her is to play some Mozart
and her favorite piece, Schubert’s Serenade.

— Irene Zimmerman, Milwaukee
 

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