In the trailer park where diapers snap on clotheslines like flags in semaphore the child cradled in my arms lies swaddled in the rhythms of her world. She hears a thrush song from the thicket and searches with her eyes. bird I tell her and wish her wings. And when she shivers to the breeze that shakes pine needles from their boughs I whisper wind and wish her grace. She looks to me while sprinkles dance staccato on our metal roof. rain I say and wish her gentleness. She gathers all these sounds of life like nosegays edged in baby's breath and stores them in her throat. Then, in a voice as soft as summer showers meadow music whiffs of wind she names me Mama. Regina Murray Brault Burlington, Vermont |
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| REGINA MURRAY BRAULT, 71, Burlington, our 4th National Senior Poet Laureate (1996), is a widowed homemaker whose poetry has run in approximately 91 publications and won over 250 awards. She just received her first Pushcart Prize nomination, proving “it's never too late.” She's Aries. |
