My Mother Talked Too Much
Dad never stopped,
and so I sought a softer language--
the way leaves spoke
or wind through pines,
lost myself in radio, "Let's Pretend,"
and books.
I heard the rasp of failures
endlessly rehearsed,
the threat of courts,
numbness of alcohol
in thick-tongued drawls.
Holding colloquy with birds,
I wandered woods and fields,
played, thought of the future,
but never of home. I am, they say,
a listener. One learns.
Sue Scalf
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