Mama Won't You See Me

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And beneath blue pines, three mothers doze,

as fireflies float over a darkening knoll, 

this cooing brook and these mirrored skies,

this great black head in stars baptised. 

Wading in waterlilies, children silhouetted,

beaten musketeers of a miscarried day,

their algae-filled boots treading waves,

while perch wink from their coral caves.

Hear this girl as she moans in the gloom,

and leaves the tall reeds and these two boys,

scrambling the riverbank with eyes of water,

to mama who sleeps far from her daughter.

Note her throat now inked with bruises, 

as fistfuls of lavender, stinking, as pooling 

dark on white plastic; the boys end their game

as her finger soars in blame.

First boy, beady-eyed and lonely on the pale

tide, since coloured noon till moon’s bony

light, knifed the pond for life, plucked scales

as if she-loves-me-nots. He wails.

Second boy, oyster-lipped with eyelids red,

sailed fields for anemone flowers now

spinning downstream, girl denied at the stile

so here he sighs. Then nosedives.

Hear this girl as she moans in the gloom,

and moans across this sequined night,

hiding her hands, bloody, to blame,

from mama who dreams and dreams quite alone,

in the sterile bleach of her 

mobile phone.