(for Lucille) <br /> <br />Our voices race to the towers, and up beyond <br />the atmosphere, to the satellite, <br />slowly turning, then back down <br />to another tower, and cell. Quincy, <br />Toi, Honoree, Sarah, Dorianne, <br />Galway. When Athena Elizalex calls, <br />I tell her I'm missing Lucille's dresses, <br />and her shoes, and Elizabeth says 'And she would say, <br />'Damn! I do look good!'' After we <br />hang up, her phone calls me again <br />from inside her jacket, in the grocery store <br />with her elder son, eleven, I cannot <br />hear the words, just part of the matter <br />of the dialogue, it's about sugar, I am <br />in her pocket like a spirit. Then I dream it — <br />looking at an illuminated city <br />from a hill, at night, and suddenly <br />the lights go out — like all the stars <br />gone out. 'Well, if there is great sex <br />in heaven,' we used to say, 'or even just <br />sex, or one kiss, what's wrong <br />with that?!' Then I'm dreaming a map of the globe, with <br />bright pinpoints all over it — <br />in the States, the Caribbean, Latin America, <br />in Europe, and in Africa — <br />everywhere a poem of hers is being <br />read. Small comfort. Not small <br />to the girl who curled against the wall around the core <br />of her soul, keeping it alive, with long <br />labor, then unfolded into the hard truths, the <br />lucid beauty, of her song. <br /> <br /> 15 Feb '10<br /><br />Sharon Olds<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/voices-107/
