My mother smiles

Standing in the bathing sunlight of the Italian kitchen

With its tan ocher textured wallpaper

Punctuated with painted ivy and purpled grapes heavy on the tooled vines

In the afternoon glow it looks as if we are in a French orchard

I could close my eyes and smell the rich honeysuckle

Blooming on the trellis beneath the open window

Taste autumn fruit on my tongue

Of juice and cinnamon

I sit, crouched, on the linoleum floor

Barefoot, in a thin and stained T-shirt with seven holes

A lucky number for an unlucky girl

Cut-off jeans, the kind I never wear out of the house

That show my thighs (Goddess forbid)

My back hunched, shoulder blades poking through the material

My hands, viper-nails freshly clipped

As I abandon the vampirism of my old masters

Fumble at the strings of the lap harp I've had

Since I was four

I could play so many things, then

Scarborough Faire, Sweet Chariot, Amazing Grace

Deft fingers creeping like a spider across the strings

Striking melancholy melodies into the heavy air of my childhood room

Now I am swallowed in this late afternoon sunburst

Concerns for anything but the strings meeting my sore fingertips

Vanishing like wisps of mist across a morning lake

I pinch the very tip of my tongue between my teeth

Coral lips pout and come fuller in my blessed frustration

Born of love

"No, no, no," I laughingly tell my mother

And her sweet, innocent amusement at my endeavor

"Listen-"

One string, two, more, striking, beats, echoes and reverberations, a dance of my digits

Notes humming and ringing into the flesh of my long bulky fingers

Mama's bronze eyebrows arch and a look of pleasant surprise crosses her like revelation

Dark olive eyes alight with the realization

She eyes the papers scattered about the floor

"Which one are you playing from?"

Gentle curiosity, maternal pride

"None-"

I make the response with confidence and joy

A vain delight spreads within my breast, silver and yellow

"My," Mama responds, a little impressed

I smile like a four-year-old being told her finger painting is worthy of the refrigerator

Sweet and broad and thrilled, wide as can be without teeth

"You learned it all by ear?"

Unbidden tears sting my eyes and I am forced to turn my head at the guiltless statement

A fluid motion, long practiced, to gracefully position my face just so

Causing my thick brassy hair to fall conveniently in a veil between me and any speaker

The salt pearls swim against the small dark lashes beneath my eyes

I buy my time to mourn for a half a moment

No more can I afford lest they ask why I weep

I do not blink, and my voice is very quiet

Must I think of you here and now? I wonder

Yes, of course I must

You are in everything I do anymore, everything I am

Everything I will be, could be

In a hundred lifetimes

Did I learn your voice by ear

The song you gathered from the deep of your soul

My mortal Gabriel with your rich eyes

I blink once

The tears vanish, stolen back within me, a broken spell

"No," I reply to my mother, turning back and smiling again

Did I learn it by ear?

I am innocuous, gentle, tender, and guileless

"No, Mama," I say simply

"I learned it by heart."

[I taught myself to play "Music of the Night" on the lap harp. That' all I can say about this. Sometimes I really wonder who this poem is for.]