I want to tell you
that the sun’s humming this morning, a tune
from long ago summer when the percolator kept time
with a dream unfolding, each pop a call to join the day’s jazz
and those early hours emerged soft,
like the sound of bullrush in breeze or the chimes
of church bells, that time in Blanc Sablon
when one by one the doors of the shingled houses opened
like momentary invitations and the townsfolk converged
along the one dirt road, greeting each other to the coastal morning
their voices harmonizing in the comfort of belonging.
Those months in hospital, all you wanted was music.
Tell me, Brother, do the dead simply stop listening?
Can you not hear your name singing through the wind?
Editor’s note: if viewing this poem on a mobile browser, turn the phone sideways.
Babo Kamel’s work appears in Greensboro Review, Lily, CV2, Poet Lore, and Best Canadian Poetry 2020. Her chapbook, After, is published with Finishing Line Press. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson’s Program For Writers. Her book, What The Days Wanted, is published with Broadstone Books. Find her at babokamel.com.
