June 14: Day by Day with Father Bill
MONDAY OF THE ELEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
I Ask My Mother to Sing by Li-Young Lee
She begins, and my
grandmother joins
her.
Mother and
daughter sing like
young girls.
If my father were
alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.
I’ve never been in
Peking, or the
Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to
watch
the rain begin on
Kuen Ming Lake, the
picnickers
running away in the
grass.
But I love to hear it
But I love to hear it
sung;
how the waterlilies
fill with rain until
they overturn,
spilling water into water,
then rock back, and
fill with more.
Both women have
begun to cry.
But neither stops her
song.