Todd Heldt

WAKING WHERE I COME FROM

6:30 in the morning, I hear my mother,
singing church choir over breakfast.
She leads two parakeets she bought
from a mother and son who raise birds
on the other side of town.  She likes the boy,
who’s so poor he doesn't know to say
thank you for a gift he doesn’t want. 
Leaks in the roof have made him too honest. 
 
Mother sings; not much has changed.
Her parakeets chirp their off-harmony.
She's washing the dishes.  Each sound builds
a cardhouse of first stirring--now a coffee cup
settles on the kitchen table.  Father rustles
the page of his paper.  I bet he thinks the song
and birds are absurd this early. It’s too much,
a morning piling on top of itself.
 
Because there’s toast beneath the butter—
Mom has no doubts about religion,
and dad won’t admit that he does. 
Across town a woman raises a chorus
of bickering birds, but can’t afford
to feed herself.  We try to paint over
the shadow on the wall, throw table scraps
to the dog that digs and howls outside the house.

Still I want the news of waking, and need
to firm it into words, though no one can lay bare 
what the climbing sun will show. 
Soon it will be time to join them, and
I’ll wash clean the face they gave me. 
In the kitchen I’ll hope for coffee, toast and jam. 
My mother will sing, the birds will chatter. 
I’ll wonder how far these voices carry.

Todd Heldt currently live in Chicago, IL where he works as a librarian. His poetry has appeared in numerous literary magazines and he was recently named a Pushcart Prize nominee. Heldt's first novel, Before You Were a Prophet has begun serialization at Hiss Quarterly and can be read online at http://hissquarterly.thehiss.net/pj/prophet1.html.