Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Tammy Armstrong "Static"

My mother cannot talk on the telephone
during electrical storms;
she's terrified the living scars of night
might come through her finger-smudged receiver,
slice foolishly into her heart
while she gives me a no-fail recipe for chowder.
Tonight she phones.
I'm still moving out West, she says.
The line snaps and hisses.
Just make it through the winter,
we'll go to the beach in June.

My mother -- moving
from the Silurian fields of the East Coast
into the pink-eyed shiver of the West.
The sky rumbles between us,
I want to tell her that homesickness has a taste,
she should wait. I'm not finished.


South side of Mecklenburg, mid-way between Carmarthen and Sydney