ABDUCTION
She is cooking walleye for supper
intent on making fish familiar to my birthland,
minute by minute she becomes my other mother
and I become the baby, learning without choice.
She calls me, ‘the daughter I wanted to have’.
I shape my words to fit her vowels, rehearse the lines
to walk the new planet of strange gestures
that I’m told mean love.
Her backyard isn’t concrete holding a Hill’s hoist
of damp sheets, it is pine trees, a hammock, a pier
leading to a lake called Gull, and a pontoon.
I sit on an iron-sleeper at the edge of the pier
look out to the stretch of ever-blue
imagine toddling towards the horizon
each new step becomes her accent
until our voices are married.
Across Gull Lake I hear
the sound of the solitary loon’s
haunting call
‘Come to me, come to me…’
my heart flies back to Melbourne
‘Come to me, come to me…’
I am running, running as fast as my little legs
will take me, back to the little brick house
with the concrete yard,
safe for me to play
skippy and knuckle-bones.
Beautiful. Thank you.