BLUE SONG

In the drawing room, she surfaces: hands folded

on her lap, hair oiled and pulled into a rubber band.

Now you are presentable, her mother had said

before sending her off.

A present? Able to be present?

she wonders, fidgeting in her seat.

Her grandmother’s scowl stays fixed

on her the afternoon.

Knitting needles click, keeping time

with the clock’s tick-tick-tick.

The sun sifts through jalousies.

Dust motes drift on shafts of light.

In the garden, her father

plucks notes and chords,

and it is him she listens for

above the room’s din, not music

but the sound of his fingers,

insistent on frets, twanging on strings,

the sound that will become this room,

her father, memory itself, ever-present blue song.