Days like this day: no Manna from heaven- <br />my mother’s voice is the rain <br />tapping against the windowsill because <br />I left the window open last night, all night <br />so that the smell of spring and home <br />would leak through the sparse holes in the screen <br />to meet me in my dreams- while I slept; <br />a peaceful relinquish of the world- <br />when there is havoc in the atmosphere: <br />lightning amputating the long limbs of trees—thunder <br />causing an earthquake in heaven, <br />and clouds that roll across the sky in every shade of black- <br />I sleep without interruption, without restlessness. <br /> <br />Mother’s words- child come in out of the rain. <br />you don’t know what portion you dread the worst— <br />your mother’s concerned voice, or the fear of absolute <br />surrender to the unknown. <br /> <br />It’s been 8 years,7 months,6 days,5 hours and 58 minutes <br />since her death—but time stands still. It neither amounts <br />nor measures the distance between the pause of that moment <br />and every beat since then— it simply collects every second of me <br />and prepares them for the burial chamber. <br /> <br />Every absent tick-tock of the sundial the light has forgotten <br />reminds me of her voice, now morphed into a strange language, <br />my own— child, come in out of the world.<br /><br />Amberlee Carter<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/you-ll-catch-your-death/
